


The Company I'm Keeping

by acheinthejaw



Category: Alexandra Savior - Fandom, Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Age Difference, Cocaine, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Recreational Drug Use, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:14:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 29,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27908053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acheinthejaw/pseuds/acheinthejaw
Summary: There are all these different Alexes - serious musician Alex; soft and dreamy Alex, who doesn’t like to be left alone at night; impulsive, demanding, unreadable Alex. As they work on writing Alexandra’s album, their relationship intensifies and she finds herself questioning how far she can fall under his spell without losing herself in the process.
Relationships: Alexandra Savior/Alex Turner (Musician)
Comments: 70
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This came into my head and refused to leave until it was written. Fair warning, this has shades of lecherousrockstar!Alex. With my sincere apologies to the real Alexandra Savior, who probably knows better.

He was still asleep when she woke up. Hair hanging in his face, head in one hand, propped up on the armchair where he so often drifted off - Alex hated sleeping alone in bed, or perhaps he was afraid of it? Perhaps he couldn't . All she really knew for sure was that he didn't. Almost every day so far spent writing this record had ended with takeout, with wine or whiskey or both, and with Alex asleep somewhere that wasn’t his bedroom and Alexandra slipping out to her car, truthfully too drunk to be driving but not nearly willing to let Alex see her in the morning, after sleeping in her clothes in his living room.

Only she was here, and it was clearly morning. The sun was starting to light up the room, its reflection outside visible in the pool. It being morning wasn't the only thing that wasn't right, the most obvious being that Alexandra had nothing but her underwear on. She knew, without fully allowing herself to look, that Alex was completely naked.

Of course he wouldn't have been ashamed. Once thousands of people have looked right into your soul, what's a bit of nudity? Alexandra felt her cheeks burn just to look at him, though. It's not as if she were some sheltered innocent lamb, but if she was being honest, this was the closest encounter she had ever had with a fully naked man. All her experiences so far had been with boys back home, backseat fumblings with their jeans around their ankles, that sort of thing. Ever since coming to L.A, she'd had a few dates, a few makeout sessions at parties, one that had even ended with some C- list actor fucking her fast and dirty on a bathroom sink -- an experience that she felt rendered her decidedly not innocent anymore ever though the truth was that the C- list actor was only the second guy she had ever actually had sex with.

Well. Until. The third guy. She couldn't even call Alex a guy. He was a man - this was his house, his house that he owned, with no roommates, no lecherous landlord, no leaky ceilings. Jesus, he was nearly thirty and she couldn't even legally drink, not for years, still. She had felt like a messy, disorganized, inexperienced kid since she'd met him.

The Alex she had imagined before she met him, the cocky, leather-jacket Alex she saw on stage, that Alex never seemed to be around, or even to exist anywhere else. But there were numerous other Alexes - serious musician Alex, who laid out the steps to writing songs, making her blush at her scribbled, messy notes that she would probably have written in ballpoint pen on her jeans if there hadn't been paper. And also at night there was a softer, dreamier Alex,one who liked to sit out by his pool and mumble to himself about the moon, the Alex who clearly didn't like to be left alone at night, who would give her reasons to stay until he fell asleep, who clearly had some issues including, but not limited to, the several pairs of what must have been his ex-girlfriends lacy underwear that she spotted one time when he was looking for a sweatshirt to lend her when a torrential downpour had caught them unexpectedly as they worked on lyrics by his pool.

The spell she had so willingly fallen under last night seemed so much filthier by the light of day. In a literal sense. That was - she looked down at herself - she had trouble even thinking it. That was Alex’s come dried on her stomach. The realization made her feel dizzy and hot somewhere behind her bellybutton. It might have been revolting. It also might still be kind of turning her on. She needed to shower - as bold as it seemed to do so without an invitation, it was non-negotiable. Going through Alex’s bedroom to get to his shower was unfathomable, but there was a second bathroom next to the spare bedroom - turned- studio, and she had been in there before and it would do. There was a leopard-print bathrobe hanging on the back of the door, no doubt another remnant of another girl - one who fit here, without having to change shape like she were made of some kind of liquid or smoke, slipping into corners where she could hide how young, how small, how stupid she felt - not just here in Alex’s house, but in L.A., in showbiz, in life.

She knew, when she arrived yesterday around noon, that this was an Alex she hadn't met before, one she had only heard of. Hollywood party Alex had shown up Thursday night, evidently, and his naughty daytime twin cocaine-Alex was still hanging around Friday daytime, his eyes huge and black, his jaw tight. He was focused as ever, more so, even. This was a pushy Alex, a cocky, confident Alex, one who resembled stage- Alex much more closely than anything Alexandra had seen so far. And he was good -- she couldn't deny it. The notes he was plucking out on the guitar fit her words better than she ever could have imagined.

This Alex took even fewer breaks than usual, didn't suggest they stop for dinner or to cannonball into the pool despite the hot, dry afternoon that was fading into a hot, dry evening. It was dark and they were still writing, and she couldn't deny that she felt high too - on the music, the words, the chords, the adrenaline that he put off when he got an idea in his head, even if it made him impatient enough to take the pen straight out of her hands, to push her fingers aside on the guitar, putting them exactly where he wanted them.

That was what started it, the electric shock she felt when his skin touched hers.

Sure, they had touched before, many times. He could be casually physically affectionate with ease, especially at the end of the day when he was that soft and lonely Alex who bought her dinner every night so that he wouldn't have to spend as many dark hours alone. And of course she realized he was good- looking , how could she not? But it had been, so far, in the detached way that she might have liked to look at someone else's boyfriend, or a guy she knew was gay, or a - a celebrity. In an unemotional way because it wasn't real. This though -- high on the energy of the song and the energy quietly radiating off of Alex- - this was real, and she felt it, and Alexandra had always had a theory about those sorts of sparks. That whether you acted on them or not, they weren't one-sided or they wouldn't have happened.

When he let go, satisfied with the position of her fingers on the fretboard, she was already trembling. She was afraid now to look at his face, afraid what she might show on her own. This resulted in the mistake of looking everywhere besides his face, namely at the increasingly obvious outline of his cock against his tight jeans.

Her eyes did snap up to his then, almost without her consent, and he was looking at her, pupils still blown huge, a hint of stubble at the sharp edge of his jaw, still tight. He didn't look particularly embarrassed. He was used to being looked at.

"The minor chord," he said.

Alexandra stared at him for a moment, having completely forgotten where she was.

"What? Oh -- "

She tried to play it his way but her hands felt like they were made of noodles, and instead of coming out low and haunting, the chord shuddered out, off-key. Alex reached for it again, still impatient, and when his hands touched her shaking ones again she gasped -- she couldn't help it. Her face burned with shame, the more she noticed her trembling, the worse it got until it felt like her entire body was vibrating. She could smell him, sweat and chlorine and cigarettes, as he leaned even closer, and gently took the guitar out of her hands and set it down on the table in front of them, pressing his whole body up against her back as he did. When he leaned back, guitar safely set aside, he grasped both her upper arms and pulled her back with him so that suddenly she was between his big solid thighs, leaning against the warmth of his t-shirt, feeling the insistent throb of his erection against the small of her back.

He held her arms tight and dipped his head so that his lips hovered above her collarbone.

"Hey. Okay?" he mumbled against her.

Her voice cracked when she first tried to use it, but she managed to get out an answering "okay."

He bent his head to bite gently at the skin where her neck met her shoulder and she sucked in a breath, continuing to shake.

"It can get like this sometimes," he murmured, "too intense to just -- to just -- not sure how -- have to get it out some other way, when the music's not enough - " and she wasn't sure if he meant this, this electric thing suddenly buzzing between them, or the drugs, which she hadn't actually seen him do but that he surely wasn't trying to hide, but either way she felt it, like there was this suddenly shaking- buzzing-wild thing inside of her and he was right, it did have to get out, and she leaned back even more, pliant in his arms.

He took this as an invitation to slide his arms around to her breasts, brushing over her nipples. She cried out, couldn't help it, as the sensation sent shockwaves through her body and straight down between her legs. He did it again, almost experimenting. and she made the same involuntary noise, feeling her clit suddenly throbbing, squirming in his arms and desperately rubbing her thighs together trying to get more of the sensation.

"Fuck," Alex breathed. "Sensitive there, are you?"

"I guess," she panted, not willing to say that no one had ever gone slow enough to touch her like that before.

“That’s fucking sexy," Alex murmured, starting to draw circles over her nipples with his fingertips, making the warm throbbing feeling spread all over her body, centered where his fingers touched her and at the throbbing between her legs. She barely realized the noises she was making, unable to stop the little gasps and moans escaping with every breath.

Alex was working her tank top and flimsy little bralette up over her chest, his fingers immediately returning as soon as she was exposed to the air and pinching each red, swollen nipple between his thumb and forefinger and she actually shouted.

"Fuck, baby, you’re so fuckin' into it," he groaned as he started to pinch her rhythmically and she panted and squirmed in his arms. "It almost seems like you're gonna come like this, can you come like this, baby? Just from this?"

"I... oh, oh... never... tried," she panted almost incoherently, too far gone to be embarrassed about any implications about her inexperience.

"Think you can, baby... think you're gonna..."

If the sensation wasn't enough, the sound of his voice in her ear was going to be, and she felt it building, the only friction she needed coming from her desperate attempts to rock her hips back and forth, making the soaking fabric of her underwear brush the tiniest bit over her swollen, sensitive clit. Alex's fingers continued to pinch at her nipples, saying "come on baby, so fuckin’ hot, gonna come before I even touch your sweet little cunt" and that was enough, she was gone, shaking so hard In his arms she didn't know how he was still able to hold her.

The minute she stopped trembling he was grabbing her arms again, turning her around and guiding her to lie back on the couch, fully pulling her top and bra over her head and flinging off his own shirt, fumbling with his jeans and shoving them and his briefs down. He grabbed at the waistband of her panties and tugged.

"Fuck, oh fuck, baby," he groaned as he pulled them down and she looked down to see herself literally dripping wet as he undressed her fully. He reached out to touch her like he couldn't help himself, his fingers slipping in easily.

He didn't waste time, didn't ask her if she was sure like the boys back in high school might have done, just held himself steady and pushed into her, holding her down, grounding her, her hands scratching down his back as she clenched around him, not sure if she could come again but overwhelmed with the feeling all the same until he pulled out and came all over her stomach with a groan. He leaned over her, panting, collecting himself, before shocking her by leaning down and lapping at her slick wet clit until she did come again, shaking and crying out.

She realized afterwards, as he was handing her a tissue to clear his come off her stomach with, that they hadn't even kissed. But she was too buzzed and exhausted to think about it, to think about anything, and before she knew it she was letting him lean his sweaty head on her shoulder and they were both asleep.

Alexandra leaned her head against the shower wall, the slow trickle of lukewarm water the best she’d been able to get out of it, and groaned. She was so fucked.


	2. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The only reasonable conclusion she could come to at the moment was that she was both disgusted and turned on, or maybe turned on because she was disgusted both with herself and with him. This was making her head hurt.

The weak, lukewarm shower didn’t do much to get Alexandra any cleaner than she’d been when she got in. When she got out, the skin of her stomach still felt sticky where -- again her brain stuttered, trying to decide between blocking it out, or reveling in the dirty-delicious jolt it sent down her spine. Her skin felt sticky where  _ Alex had come on her last night. _ After fucking her. After making her come without even touching her -- her --  _ your sweet little cunt _ , her brain supplied. She’d never used that word in her life. This was not good. They still had to work together. Her album, as much as she hated to admit it, was depending on him. The label was letting her go ahead on the condition that he co-write and produce it. She was grateful, and she had tried to use that gratitude to outweigh the times when she resented him and wanted to do everything her own way, because it was hers. The kind of control he’d so easily taken over her last night didn’t bode well for her ability to stand her ground. Or, frankly, to think straight. She wasn’t sure if she was disgusted or not. The only reasonable conclusion she could come to at the moment was that she was both disgusted and turned on, or maybe turned on because she was disgusted both with herself and with him. This was making her head hurt.

Her top and jeans were still on the floor of the living room. Putting her underwear back on was not an option.  _ Because you got it soaking wet _ , the unbidden voice in her brain supplied not-so-helpfully again.  _ Can’t believe you even put it back on after that in the first place, that’s filthy. _

“Shut up,” she muttered to herself, grabbing the leopard bathrobe off the back of the door and wrapping it around herself. After everything that happened last night, if he was mad she’d borrowed an abandoned bathrobe from whatever ex-girlfriend had left it here, well, that was his problem.

Alex was still sleeping in the armchair when she got back into the living room, even though the sun was shining right on him by now. She pulled her top and jeans back on, cringing a little bit at the feel of the rough denim on her skin, and more than a little at the feel of her lacy bralette on her nipples, which he’d rubbed raw last night.

Should she leave a note? Wake him up? Or just slip out? Every option was awkward and unpleasant. It was probably going to be more awkward if she left without them speaking again - that is, if she ever planned to come back. Which she had to. Alexandra didn’t like to think of herself as a coward. She  _ wasn’t _ a coward. Which left only one option, unless she was going to sit around and wait for him to wake up, which could take hours. Hours of sitting around with no underwear. No thank you.

“Alex,” she said softly. He slept on. “Alex.” She got closer, leaned over on the arm of the chair he was sleeping in, and gently shook his shoulder. He wasn’t getting any less naked, which for some reason continued to surprise her. She was trying really hard not to look at --

“‘’Ey,” he said in a raspy voice, and her eyes snapped up from where she had decidedly not been looking at his half-hard...he was making an odd face, like he wanted to be smirking but wasn’t sure if he was about to get slapped in the face, either.

“I, um…” her voice sounded coarse, this was the first time she’d used it for anything since she’d been moaning embarrassingly for him while he held her in his lap. She felt a flush creeping up her neck. “I’m going to go home and, um, and change.”

She was already standing up to go when he grabbed her arm gently. “Alex?”

Even though plenty of people called her Alex, it was always strange when he did.

“Yeah?”

“I - er. Um.” He cleared his throat. “I’m a bit of a dickhead, aren’t I?”

His hand on her arm felt like burning herself with a curling iron. She looked at it, because she still couldn’t decide whether looking at his face or his dick was more dangerous.

“It’s not like I said no, Al.”

His face relaxed. “I just...I wasn’t me best self. Last few days. Get like that sometimes. Tense, like.” He shrugged. “Wouldn’t want to think I was too pushy.”

“It’s like you said,” she continued. “Just...getting it out. Getting some tension out. Or whatever.” She shrugged too, like it would get the tension out of her back. “Plus, I know you were high. I didn’t get to L.A. yesterday.”

He huffed out a bit of a laugh at that, looked up at her with big heavy-lidded eyes, and if she wasn’t careful she was going to get right back in his lap. “You got me,” he said. “I’m so --” he stopped for an enormous yawn. “So tired. What time is it?”

“Like ten, maybe.”

His eyes were already closed again. “Come back at three. We’re good? Alex?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re good, Alex.”

He was smiling, but it might have been because he was asleep again.

  
  


The strange thing was, they were good. By the time Alexandra got back to Alex’s house hours later (after another shower at her house, a long hot one that finally made her feel clean, at least on the outside), Alex was back to the more familiar version of himself. He’d cleaned up the living room, put the borrowed bathrobe back without comment. He had showered and was wearing jeans and a checked button-down that made him look almost sweet and preppy, if not for his shaggy hair and the tattoo poking out from the left sleeve. Well, and the rings under his eyes - a shower and a momma’s-boy outfit wasn’t going to cover those up. They picked up working on the song they had been writing the day before, and this time he didn’t snatch the guitar out of her hands, let her try his suggestions herself before settling and writing them down. He didn’t touch her any more than usual, or any less. And if she got a little worked up when he did, well, that was just keeping her on her toes, right? If she was staying up nights touching herself, thinking of his hands on her, the way his fingers had sunk right into her dripping wet  _ cunt, _ well, she was just a normal red-blooded teenage girl and he was Band Guy Alex. Normal. Predictable. Right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't want you to be a gentleman. I want you to do it again."

Alexandra never, ever would have described herself as sheltered. Okay, perhaps if the situation called for it, someone might have chosen that word in a good way. Such as, yes, she had largely been sheltered from trauma and suffering. She had been sheltered in the sense that she had grown up in relative safety, in a city that by comparison was more like a town. But Alexandra never thought she was sheltered in the sense of being naïve. She was sure of herself. She thought she knew how the world worked. She thought she knew what to expect. At parties where drunk guys would grope her, she felt sure of herself when she slipped out of their sweaty fingers. She felt sure of the sway of her hips when she walked away. She felt sure of the sound of her voice - she felt sure of that.

Usually.

Zach was a bass player and Alex’s friend as well, and he came over one afternoon to listen to what they had recorded so far on Alex's 8-track and talk about if he wanted to play bass on the record. This hadn't exactly been discussed with Alexandra in a way that would have given her any opportunity to object, and anyway, what would she have done? In her mind they would have found some cool-chick bass player, but it wasn't like she had any options or suggestions, or connections of her own. Just a fantasy.

Speaking of fantasy, Alex had rewritten half of a song she was proud of and she didn't have the guts to tell him how important that line about shining was to her, but kept imagining herself telling him. Speaking of fantasy, he brought her with him to a casual party at a friend's house, where he touched her all night with purpose, holding on to her waist as if he wasn't worried at all that she would pull away. Speaking of fantasy, she couldn't stop watching his mouth when he talked, his fingers when he smoked. Speaking of fantasy, as much as she burned with frustration while he held her around the waist and let his friend call her his "little protégé", imagining a version of herself that could hold her own, she didn't want to move away from his hand. It was unfair how worked up she got just from that touch. It was unfair how her anger just made her more turned on, made her skin feel like it was burning all over before he even touched her.

There was nothing wrong with Zach. He seemed perfectly nice and he played in a bunch of different bands, so maybe he wouldn't be fixed on any one particular sound. He was relaxed, more California-dude cool than Alex, in a natural, unpracticed way. He seemed to be a real West-Coaster and confirmed this when she asked, He bobbed his head along to the melodies they had been working with and seemed to really get into it. Still, Alexandra got the impression that everything he said, he was really saying to Alex and looking for Alex's approval. The two of them got caught up in their own conversation right over her head, literally, as she sat and picked at loose threads in the carpet and rolled new lyrics around in her mind.

She was pulled out of her daze when Alex reached across her to grab the acoustic guitar. He strummed a couple chords.

"Try some of the lyrics we wrote yesterday."

Alexandra cleared her throat, got up on the piano bench so that her posture was correct, and drawled out the lines (Alex’s words, Alex's lines) in the slow, throaty lounge-singer voice that she had been practicing.

“Whatever the fuck I want, 

I sing songs about…

whatever the fuck they want.”

"Damn kid, you've got a voice," said Zach when she paused at the end. "But Al, are you corrupting this poor innocent girl? She sounds like she's never said the word 'fuck' out loud before."

Alexandra felt her face get hot. "Fuck off," she said, trying to sound like it was playful and not angry.

"Kidding! Kidding," Zach said, and his face was genuine and relaxed, like he really had just been teasing her, trying to make friends in that idiot kind of way that boys (men? guys?) often did. She knew this, but the words were still there, pounding a hot drum roll in her throat, her chest, her ears. Alex was fidgeting, feeling behind his ear for the cigarette tucked there and evidently realizing that he had already smoked it.

Zach noticed this, pulled a baggie out of his pocket and tossed it at Alex, who caught it in his hand only after it bounced off his face.

"I suppose you're telling me you're done working," he said, opening up the baggie and giving the weed a sniff.

"I suppose I am," said Zach in a fake English accent, terrible and nothing like Alex’s, but Alex laughed all the same.

"Alexandra?" he questioned, glancing at her.

"I'm down," she said.

" 'cause no pressure - "

"Chill," she said. "I've smoked weed before, jeez."

This was not the skunky weed that her neighbor at home used to share with her behind his garage, though, and Zach and Alex each grabbed a full bottle of wine for just the three of them and filled her up a sizeable plastic cup, easily a third of one of the bottles in one go. She felt almost instantly lightheaded, but it helped. It helped quiet some of her irritation from earlier, helped her redirect some of that irritation away from Zach, who hadn't done anything to her besides be perfectly friendly and agree to spend his afternoon listening to her sing and giving suggestions for the rhythm track.

They sat there smoking for awhile, while the sun slowly set. There wasn't much of the weed left - Zach was holding just a little end of the joint between his thick fingertips. He tipped it a bit towards Alexandra in offering.

"You finish it," she said.

"Well, let's not waste it."

Zach held the smoke in his lungs and reached over to Alex, gesturing like he should come closer. Alex leaned in compliantly and let Zach breathe the smoke out into his mouth. 

Alexandra was very aware of the presence of her heart beat and tried to lie to herself that this was just the effect of being stoned. She tried very hard to hold on to this lie when Zach handed the joint to Alex, who breathed in the smoke, held it in his lungs while he wrapped his hand around the back of Alexandra’s neck to pull her closer and breathe it out into her lips.

Her eyes nearly crossed at the sensation of Alex’s hand on the back of her neck. She was shaking again, nearly vibrating. She took the last pull of the joint, prayed that Zach wouldn’t touch her because it didn’t matter at this point that she wasn’t attracted to him, any physical contact was going to make her explode. He leaned over with his hands on the ground for support, bless him.

Somehow her cup of wine had been refilled without her even noticing. She  could taste the redness of the sediment lingering in the grooves between her teeth and the dry spots on her lips and she ran her tongue over it, completely absorbed in the sensation, feeling the reverberations from her tongue vibrating in a warm vibration all the way down to her toes. She kicked off her Keds and looked up at the moon, barely listening to Alex and Zach talking, their voices just a humming bass line to the song she was composing in her head.

She opened her eyes. The song was gone and there was nothing but the pulsing quiet of L.A. at night, distant cars, the pool filter's gentle swishing. She sat up and was almost startled to find Alex still there on his pool chair, smoking a cigarette, using one of the empty wine bottles to tap the ash in to. He didn't say anything, just cocked an eyebrow in greeting. Alexandra opened and closed her dry mouth uncomfortably.

"How long was I asleep for?"

"Not long. Maybe a half hour."

"Did Zach leave?"

Alex nodded. "Not long ago. Wondered if his car would wake you up, but it didn’t. Said to tell you goodbye, you looked too peaceful to disturb."

Alexandra wasn't sure if she should be embarrassed or not.

"I sould - shhhould - I mean, should go too," Alexandra said, trying to ignore how drunk she knew she sounded. She was too on edge from biting her tongue all day, didn't trust herself around nighttime Alex with his feet bare and the moon reflecting on his face like some stupid love song. Standing up proved too much of a challenge for her drunk, dehydrated brain and she wobbled precariously.

Alex moved quicker than she would have expected him to, grabbing her by the elbow as she tilted and stopping her from tumbling completely over. He pushed her back onto the chair she had been on, holding her there by her shoulder. Lightly, again, like he wasn’t really worried that she was going to try to get away.

"You're not driving like that." He was looking at her in a soft and dangerous-looking way, and his fingers slid a bit towards the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, biting her lip - and suddenly the sensation was gone. She opened her eyes to find Alex turning towards the house.

"Where ya going?"

"To get another bottle."

Alexandra tried to get up again, thought better of it when her head spun.

"You’re tryna keep me drunk so that you don’t have to go to bed alone." She shocked herself by saying it out loud, but there was something thrilling about it, too. Something heart-pounding about letting whatever popped into her mind come out of her mouth. Being able to say whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, like he had the power to do. 

"Maybe," Alex said, disappearing inside the house. She closed her eyes again, waiting. Alex returned a few minutes later. She heard his soft footsteps across the damp concrete. and the pop of him pulling the cork out of a third bottle of wine, then silence. She opened an eye.

"You gonna pour that?"

He set it down on the ground between his feet. "Do you really want to go home? I can drive you, before I have any more."

" Such a gentleman."

"Do you?"

"You're worried now?"

"What does that mean?"

She didn't want to go home. She wanted to want to go home and go to sleep like a sane person would want. She didn't want to be the kind of girl who got horny from guys who ignored her, talked over her, interrupted her, got her drunk and pliant so they could have their way with her. She wanted him to have his way with her. This was dangerous, a bad idea, an even worse idea than the first time, which at least had been an accident. But knowing that wasn't enough to stop her from continuing to chase the thrill of saying whatever popped into her head.

"You're worried about me now - I mean, about corrupting me now or something, once Zach said it, not the other day when you were fucking me on your couch. Without a condom."

There was a palpable silence, broken only by the sound of Alex swallowing what sounded like about half the bottle in one gulp.

She didn't blame him for having nothing to say. She was being intentionally blunt, provocative, her mind flailing about and unable to decide what she wanted - the upper hand, his hands on her, everything at once.

"Alexandra," he started, but she cut him off.

"I don't want you to be a gentleman. I want you to do it again.”


	4. Chapter 4

As tempting as it was to lay there pretending that her voice was a separate entity from her body, he stayed quiet for so long that Alexandra eventually had to open her eyes. Alex was looking at her intensely. He handed her the bottle of wine , which he had indeed downed a substantial portion of in the past few minutes. She took it, took a slug straight out of the bottle like he had.  
  
"Let's go inside," he said, getting up and taking a step before stopping to look back and wait for her. "Bring that," he added, jerking his head towards the bottle of wine. She stood carefully, not bothering to even look for wherever she had kicked her shoes off. This was almost too simple. In her mind, she had been expecting, if she indicated that she wanted a repeat of the other night, for him to get cold and distant, to lecture her about boundaries. Why would he do that, when he had made the move in the first place? She had no idea, but it was still what she had been expecting to happen. It just fit in better with how she had been feeling - like she was about to mess up any moment, like he was her teacher and she was just asking for detention. She expected that the Alex who had fucked her and manhandled her and talked dirty to her was the anomaly out of all the Alexes, so unlike Alex the Serious Musician and Alex the Budding Music Producer and Alex who asked a crowd at a festival to sing happy birthday to his mother. She didn't know that for certain, though. It was entirely possible that all those other Alexes were just hiding the dirty, demanding, impulsive Alex that was always waiting for a few drinks and the cover of darkness to let him out from wherever he was hiding.  
  
Alex clearly expected her to follow him so she did. She followed through the back door, through the kitchen and the living room to the closed door of his bedroom, the inside of which she had only seen the one time when she had borrowed his sweatshirt, though it had recently been playing a prominent role in her fantasies — the privacy, the mystery of it - Alex's space alone, where others didn't go but where he was somehow unable to get any peace himself.  
  
She didn't get much of a look at anything before he shoved her none-too-gently towards his bed. The backs of her knees hit the edge and she sank onto the comforter, bouncing a little as she looked up at him, eyes wide. Again his hand found its way to her shoulder, then her neck, where he stroked his fingertips over the sensitive skin there and she gasped.  
  
"Mmhm, I thought so," murmured Alex, curling his fingers where he’d held her earlier when they were shotgunning the last of the joint, scratching his nails just below her hairline and making her moan. “Got all these fuckin' erogenous zones, so easy to get you squirming for me. Wanna find all of them...” his voice trailed off almost as if he were talking just to himself. “Make a map of you...til you’re mine.”  
  
He was standing at the edge of the bed, getting closer and closer between her spread legs so that her face was level with the fly of his jeans and the visible outline of his cock. Loose with wine and adrenaline, she did the first thing that occurred to her, which was to press her open mouth over it and breathe in deeply as if she could taste it through the layers of fabric.  
  
"Fuck," Alex grunted from above her, reflexively grabbing a handful of hair at the nape of her neck just above where he'd been stroking her. He pulled her head back so she was looking up at him. He was breathing hard, his jaw slack, and she knew she looked the same, pulling against his grip trying to get back her tenuous control of the situation, get her mouth back on him.  
  
“You wanna suck me? You like doing that, love?” he murmured, rubbing his thumb back and forth where he held her. A smarter version of herself, a more collected version of herself - hell, a more sober version of herself would have smiled coyly, made some flirtatious comment, or said nothing at all. But Alexandra hadn't learned to shapeshift like that yet and so all that came out was the truth.  
  
"I never have."  
  
He didn’t seem to even be breathing for a moment while he processed that statement, and then he breathed out "oh fuck ," and she could actually see the thick, hard length of him jerk untouched through his jeans. "Fuck."  
  
"I want to," she whispered. "I wanna, wanna taste it, let me - "  
  
He let go of her hair and stepped back, undoing his belt and the fly of his jeans, her hands coming up to tangle with his, mostly getting in the way but unable to stop touching him. He shoved his jeans down, not even bothering to take them off all the way and grabbed her hair again to pull her back towards him. She was still a little stoned and a lot drunk and the smoothness of the fat purple head of his cock under her tongue was fascinating, incredible, all-consuming, like she could sit there all night just licking it and wrapping her fists in the hem of Alex’s tshirt and slowly rocking her hips into the bed.  
  
Alex had both his hands on her now, one fisted firmly in her hair, the other still rubbing at that sensitive spot on the back of her neck, sending shivers down her spine every time he passed over just the right spot to make her moan and get her mouth a little wider around him. She was right up on the edge of the bed and the loose skirt she was wearing had hiked up almost around her hips, giving Alex ample room to sink partly on to the bed where her legs were spread open and press one of his knees up between her thighs. The sudden pressure made her gasp, muffled around the head of his cock, and he took the opportunity to push in deeper.  
  
"Relax your jaw, baby" he murmured, slipping his hand out of her hair to stroke the skin on her neck and around her lips. "You're doing so good, let me in baby, gonna get so deep, I'll teach you how to take it all -"  
  
She hadn't realized how wet she was getting until he got his knee between her legs. She was soaked, no doubt getting his pants damp, but it felt too good to care and she rocked into him harder and pulled him closer, gagging a little as his cock hit the back of her throat for the first time. He let her pull back but kept her from pulling off him completely, pushing his knee up into her harder.  
  
"Swallow around it, baby,” he said, pushing in again, and she did as he said without thinking, feeling her throat loosen.  
  
"Ohh, you're a fuckin' natural," he moaned and the praise made her ever wetter, rocking into him desperately now, feeling like she might get there before him and she wasn't even the one getting head. He noticed her movements getting more frantic,  
losing her rhythm but still swallowing around his cock every time he pushed into her. He pulled back a few inches, still holding her hair, so he could look down at her flushed face and the outline of her hard nipples poking through her white t-shirt as she licked at him and squirmed in his grip, trying to get closer.  
  
"You're gonna come, aren't you baby,” he panted. “So easy, it's so fuckin' hot, can make you come just lettin' you ride me leg and suck me cock, can't imagine what's gonna happen when I finally get inside you, fuck-“  
  
She had a fleeting thought that she was probably going to be embarrassed about this later - how desperate she seemed, how easily she’d let him see her inexperience, how easily she was letting him see her open and unguarded. But in this moment all the power felt like it lay in getting what she wanted, and all she could think about wanting right now was this — his praise, the dumbstruck look on his face when she opened her eyes right before she did start to tremble and lose control and let her orgasm wash over her. He kept thrusting into her mouth as she shivered and moaned around him, digging her hands into the skin around his waist just to have something so that she wouldn’t fly apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapters! I’ve been posting as soon as I reach a semi-stopping point rather than wait until I have a longer piece to let myself agonize over. Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

He had slowed his pace down while she was out of it, and now he was almost still, slowly rocking his hips back and forth while stroking her neck with his thumb. He took his leg back and she saw, with embarrassment and a thrill of something like pride, that there was a damp spot on his jeans where she had been riding him. He pulled out of her mouth and she leaned forward trying to chase him, but he stopped her by grabbing the shoulders of her t-shirt and pulling up until she let go of his hips and helped him pull it over her head. He smelled incredibly good for no rational reason, it wasn’t soap or laundry detergent or cologne or even smoke, just _good._ She wanted him back in her mouth, leaning forward again when he pulled his own shirt up and off to suck at the newly-bared skin of his stomach. His cock jerked up and hit her in the chin and she bent her head to take it back in her mouth. Before she could, he stepped back out of her reach. He kicked his jeans and briefs fully off and dropped down on his knees between her legs, pushing them apart and brushing a thumb across the soaked fabric of her underwear.

"I'm not worried about corrupting you," he said. "You don't need me to be." He ran his thumb over the swollen nub of her clit, visible through the cotton, and she jerked up into his touch.

"I _want_ you to.''

"Yeah," he said, pushing harder on her clit, watching her struggle between pressing up for more and trying to squirm away from the overstimulation. He bit his lip, looking up into her face almost more intensely than she could handle at this point. "I saw it from the start, wondered if it was gonna go like this. We’re a lot alike. Wouldn't be the first time. Won't be the last time." 

"Al, what -- ' ' _What does that mean._

He shook his head, lips pressed tight like he was trying to stop anything else from coming out, and pulled his hand back. "Take those off.” His voice was harder now, rougher than it had been a moment ago when he'd been kneeling and murmuring to her. She slipped out of her underwear and kicked it to the floor. 

"Get up on the bed."

Any self-consciousness she still had left was misplaced; he wasn’t even looking at her. He had found the remainder of the wine where she had left it forgotten on the floor, was downing most of what was left and handing her the rest. Her lips felt all swollen and she dripped some of it down her chin before catching herself and licking the spilled drops off her fingers. She looked up to find Alex crawling up on to the bed, taking the bottle out of her hand and setting it down empty on the floor. He twisted his fingers in her now-sticky ones, holding her arms down by her sides as he kneeled up over her.

_Kiss me already_ , she thought, somehow finding this impossible to say aloud despite all the far more embarrassing things she’d said and done tonight. Instead she licked her lips and tilted her chin up in a silent demand. _Come on and fucking kiss me already, asshole._

He didn’t, though. Instead he let go of her hands to fumble in the nightstand. She had an insane thought to stop him, tell him just to fuck her, she was on birth control, and if he had gonorrhea or something she had probably already caught it anyway so what was the harm, it was instinct or pheromones or who knows what, he smelled so fucking good, she wanted his skin on hers, she wanted him inside her, wanted him to -- but this was such a dangerous train of thought that to shut her mind up she finally pulled his face down and kissed him first.

The romance novels that she used to read while hiding under the covers always described kisses as tasting of something, as if when he licked into her mouth she would find these mundane but somehow important secrets -- spearmint toothpaste, red wine, cigarettes -- but in real life taste had nothing to do with this, his mouth was as hot and wet as her own and she could barely tell any more what was her and what was him as their teeth clacked together between his whispers to her _you’re mine, you’re fucking mine_ , and her answering _Alex, Alex, Alex,_ until she wasn't sure any more if she was saying his name or her own.


	6. Chapter 6

  
  


Alexandra was alone when she woke up. She’d drifted in and out during the night and each time she had heard Alex breathing, so he couldn’t have been gone long. Meaning her suspicions had been true; it was something about sleeping in his bedroom alone, not the bedroom itself. 

It was only just starting to get light outside. After all that had gone down last night, it probably hadn’t even been midnight when they had finally fallen asleep. She kicked off the covers and looked around. The bedroom was shockingly bare. There was nothing hanging on the walls, no extraneous furniture, just the bed and dresser and nightstand and a single lonely-looking reading lamp. No particular sign of Alex. He had closed the door behind him whenever he had left. Her clothes were folded neatly on top of the dresser and his jeans were no longer on the floor. He was always abnormally tidy for a supposed rockstar so this shouldn’t have surprised her at this point, though something about him picking her underwear up off the floor felt distressingly personal. Unbidden, her mind went to the time she’d glimpsed the left-behind girlfriend’s lacy thongs in his bottom drawer. She tugged her own black cotton boyshorts back on with her t-shirt and contemplated whether or not to venture into his bathroom. The worry of encountering Alex in the hallway before she’d gotten a chance to see what a mess she looked like decided for her. 

The damage wasn’t that bad. She found his toothpaste left out on the counter and brushed her teeth with her finger. A little bit of a fluff with her fingers was enough to turn her horrifying bedhead into sort-of-sexy bedhead, though the necessary movement of her neck set off the hangover headache that she had managed to ignore so far. Obviously now that she was in here she was going to snoop in the medicine cabinet, but at least her headache was an excuse to be looking for painkillers. This was much more satisfying snooping than in the other bathroom. Xanax, Klonopin, Vicodin, Ritalin, another Klonopin, all labelled for Alexander D. Turner 1/6/86. (So he wasn’t actually thirty yet, at least there was that, but shit, he was nine when she was _born._ ) She found some Advil and swallowed two, then a third for good measure. 

The floor was freezing. What had she done with her shoes? They were still out by the pool, probably. 

Alex wasn’t in the living room, where she had half-expected to find him sleeping, or in the kitchen, or outside, where he hadn’t tidied up yet and she found her sneakers kicked aside along with the two finished bottles of wine and three red plastic cups, one full of used matches. His car was in the driveway, so he hadn’t left. That meant he was in the spare bedroom. Working, as perhaps she ought to be, though when she finally found her phone (under a pool chair, thankfully unharmed) she saw it was only 8:30.

She opened the door without knocking and found him bent over the piano, scribbling in a notebook. He had last night’s clothes back on and didn’t look like he’d showered. His fingers were twisted in a handful of his own hair. He looked up when she came in. She was suddenly sort of...nervous? worried? Despite all last night’s evidence to the contrary she was still expecting it all to blow up in her face, but then he smiled, and that was just completely unfair.

“Did I wake you?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me what you think of this.” He picked out a few bars on the piano. 

“Are there lyrics?”

He nodded and played the melody again, singing along this time .

_all of our exchanges are by candlelight_

_I just realized_

_make sense of a maze_

_that you were stuck outside_

“It’s different,” she said. “Doesn’t sound like what you’ve written with me. Doesn’t really sound like your band either, does it? I mean I haven’t listened to everything you guys have done, but…”

“No, you’re right, it’s not a Monkeys song, either.“ He frowned. "Like something Miles would write, maybe." 

She looked at his notes. "Cover your eyes," she said.

"Hm?"

"That's the next line, I think."

"Cover your eyes. Stuck outside. Make sense of this maze. Yeah. It works.” He scribbled something else down and then shifted over on the piano bench to make room for her to look over the notes with him. "Sorry," he said, "I'm all sweaty still. Just had this idea, didn’t want to get in the shower and lose it.”

He was sweaty, and dirty, and she was not remotely repulsed by it and it was completely unfair, but he didn't really need to know that right now. Even after everything, the press of his thigh next to hers was still enough to make her feel dizzy and hot and a little nauseous again. Or maybe that was just the hangover.

"Ouch," he said apparently out of nowhere, "I'm sorry.''

"What?"

He touched something a little below her ear, gently, with just his fingertip.

"What is it?"

"Ah, I, um. Think that’s my. Um. My nails. Didn't realize I were grabbing so rough." 

Her hand went up to feel where he was touching and found a few indentations there, one of them almost a little raised and scabby-feeling, like he had broken the skin. She hadn't even noticed. It didn't hurt, but she shivered thinking about it.

"You, um, don't have a boyfriend who’s gonna come kick me head in when he sees that, do ya?" 

"No," she said. "When would I -- jeez Al, now you ask?" 

He shrugged. She touched the spot again. She sort of wished it hurt.

"What did you mean last night?" It was easier to ask like this, when they were sitting side by side and she had the page of lyrics to look at rather than his face.

"When?"

"You said something like, you thought it might go this way."

"Yeah... yeah. Like now. You know?" She cocked her head. No, she didn't know at all. "Writing together. It’s like, you start having one mind. Same thoughts. No shame, anymore. I mean, you can’t have any when it’s working. It’s...intense. It gets intense.”

"And it has to go somewhere,” she said slowly. He nodded. "Like last week.'' 

”Mmhm. Maybe. I weren't sure. Thought maybe it were just me. It’s happened before, with people who I were doing something this personal with. But I didn't know if it were only me. Felt all...wound up. But I didn’t know. Thought maybe I could get the intensity off on me own."

"On your own?"

He shifted in his seat. "Not on me own like...that.'' _Alex naked, with his hand on his cock, squeezing the base, thinking about her — stop that,_ she told her disobedient brain. He cleared his throat. "I mean with the…that's when I end up hittin' the blow. Not the best. But it helps. When there’s not something -- or someone -- else to." 

"Who else have you….”

He shook his head. "Come now," he nudged her playfully, "Can't tell you all me secrets now, can I?"

"You haven't told me any!" If anything, she knew less now than she had before, except that she had been right, when he had first touched her. She was right that you feel that spark when the other person is feeling it too, had been feeling it may be even sooner than she had. And that he hadn’t been sure…about her? That she would let him? It made sense but at the same time it didn’t. 

"Al," she said. "Are _you_ seeing anyone?"

"No," he said, looking surprised at the question even though he had asked her the same one. "No."

"Good,” she said.

There was a silence, but not an entirely uncomfortable one. She took the notebook and pencil from him and scribbled down a few more lines,

_Do it like a stranger does_

_Send me flying every time_

Maybe there was something to what he said, about the intensity, the intimacy, like crossing the line made things easier, not worse. She’d never been this productive with a hangover before. But she still felt unsettled, like there were questions she couldn't get the answers to because she didn’t even know what to ask.

Eventually they had hit a stopping point and by then it was early afternoon. 

"Do you want to eat something?" he asked.

"Honestly? I really want to go put clean clothes on."

"Sorry," Alex said. "I'm filthy. Too many years spent on a tour bus full of other guys. No ladies to make us bathe. Unimaginable squalor. "

"I shudder to think."

"We can pick up tomorrow? I don't want to hold you hostage here." 

She wasn't nearly as bold as she had been last night, sure, but there was something still there, something she’d awoken that lingered in the sober light of day and made her turn around from where she'd been tying her shoes, quirk an eyebrow, and say "don't you?"

He gave her his serious-Alex look, the one he used when they were writing and she wanted to skip ahead and write the bridge, scribble notes all over her hands, take breaks, turn cartwheels. She mentally kicked herself all the way to the door when he abruptly caught her by the arm, crowded her up against the doorjamb and pressed his thumb behind her ear, where he had left the half-moon imprints of his fingernails behind on her neck. "Bring a change of clothes, next time," he said, “because now I know how fuckin' dirty I can get you, I fully plan to do it again.” He let go of her, leaving her speechless, and turned back towards his bedroom, presumably to finally shower. She only vaguely remembered driving home, where she played that line over and over again in her mind while she showered, ate, moved through the house like a zombie until she finally fell into bed, turning his words over in her mind, _no shame, intense, make sense of the maze, it gets like this_ and wondering why she still couldn’t make sense of anything.

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is all over the place and I really don't know what's happening, I just keep following the characters along for the ride and seeing where they take me...

Alexandra had no idea why she was up this early. Even after lying in bed hoping she would fall back asleep for what felt like hours, when she rolled over and looked at the time it was barely after six. Giving up, she grabbed her phone and went downstairs to make coffee. Sara, one of her two housemates, was already in the kitchen, drinking green tea and looking at something on her phone. Alexandra liked her roommates fine, they were fun and friendly, but the three of them honestly rarely saw each other - Sara was a dancer and almost always had rehearsals at some hour in the morning that Alexandra preferred to pretend didn’t exist, and their other housemate was the opposite, an actress-slash-tennis instructor who was rarely up before noon. Sara looked surprised to see her, but smiled brightly. Way too brightly for this hour.

"Hey girl," she said. “Where’ve you been?"

"Just working a lot,” Alexandra said, not even having to fake the yawn that slipped out. “Need coffee.” She dumped an approximation of the right amount of grounds into her French press and filled it with the hottest water she could get out of the sink. This coffee was going to be an embarrassment to the Pacific Northwest but it was 6 am and therefore dire circumstances.

Sara eyed her. "Just working?"

“Yes, mom?”

"Not mom-ing you!" Sara had a way of making her eyes extra huge, which along with her ballerina- skinniness and her ever-present bun sometimes made her look like a cartoon character. “But you rarely stay out all night, and you weren’t home when I got up yesterday morning...hot date? Wild party? Or did your workaholic producer finally hold you hostage all night?”

Oh god.

The other girls didn’t know much about her day-to-day, she was pretty sure, and their view was definitely colored by the way she had described it, which was... maybe not fully accurate. They knew something to the effect of "Alex is writing her record, she is working on it with the guy who’s producing it, he’s from some band that’s really big in the U.K., she is there seven days a week and late every night because he is a workaholic.'' She had also only ever referred to Alex in front of them as "Turner". Impersonal. Her producer. So clinical. She had been trying to cover up her childish excitement, make it seem like he was just an agent of the big bad record-industry machine. This narrative went over well with her roommates, who had known each other beforehand from going to an all-girls private school together back home in New York. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant to Alexandra, either, who felt a little bolder when she set herself up in the story as the creative ingenue and him as the Man, a Suit, the Industry.

Clearly, she had been overcompensating for some repressed sexual tension, she thought while staring into the depths of her giant coffee mug. Who needed a therapist? Apparently all she had needed was to get completely drunk and suck some dick to clarify how emotionally disturbed she was.

“I see that smile,” Sara pressed. “Look at you trying to hide it! You totally met someone. It’s ok, you don’t have to tell me, keep your secrets. Just let us know if he’s gonna come over and keep you up screaming all night so we can put our earplugs in.” She got up to rinse out her teacup. “But if you wanna dish, let me know. All the guys I work with are gay, I don’t even have time to swipe through Tinder and I’m desperate to live vicariously through someone else right now.”

The thought of Alex coming to her crappy rented house with her roommates, with their collection of fake ID’s stuck to the fridge and the mice in the pantry and her fuzzy pink bedspread was somewhere between comical and horrifying.

“Thanks,” Alexandra said, not altogether insincerely. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  
  
  


Two cups of coffee later, she went upstairs to get dressed and gather up her stuff. She tossed her notebook, her charger, and her sunglasses into her bag, and paused.  _ I fully plan to do it again _ . She tossed in her bathing suit. It was hot, and they often enough would jump in the pool in the afternoon. And if you're going somewhere with your bathing suit, it follows to bring clean underwear. This was all normal stuff to put in her bag. How far could this go before it got presumptuous? Were they fucking now, like an active verb, rather than they fucked, once or twice? Was it going to jinx it to bring a toothbrush? 

A girl is allowed to just carry a toothbrush in her bag for no reason, she decided. That was normal too, she was a busy big-city girl now, not just little Alex McDermott from Portland. Maybe she would have impromptu exciting plans and not want coffee breath.

Ok, yeah right, who was she kidding. She rarely went anywhere besides Alex’s house recently; all they did was work. She threw the toothbrush in anyway and left it at that.

Alex opened the door with coffee in his hand even though when they settled in to keep working on the song they’d started yesterday, he also had an open, half- drunk Red Bull on the piano. He looked exhausted. This was the polar opposite of pushy, coked-up Alex who snatched guitars out of her hands when she didn’t follow his instructions. He let her take the lead, try out chords, only pausing her once in awhile to scribble down some of his own lyrics. He had a separate notebook that he kept writing things in, too. At one point he put his pencil in his mouth, twisted his fist so tightly in his own hair it looked like it hurt, and stared off into space for such a long time that she finally waved her hand in front of his face to check that he was still alive.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling the pencil out of his mouth. “I were...somewhere else. What time is it?”

She checked her phone. “8:15”.

“I still have a bunch of that Thai from the other night, want some?”

She nodded, following him into the kitchen, where he pulled a few styrofoam containers out of the fridge and stuck his head back inside to peruse what was there.

“White? Or beer?”

“Whatever.”

“White, then.” He stood up, closed the fridge, and stared at the food on the counter like he was confused about what to do with it.

“Do you want a plate?” she suggested gently. “Glasses?”

“Glasses,” he said. “Don't need a plate unless you do.”

Ok, no plates then. Space-cadet Alex was still standing there, chewing his lip. “Should we sit?” she prodded. 

“Mhm.” He took the food and wine and started towards the couch; she grabbed two glasses out of the cabinet and followed him. He sat down and promptly filled her glass to the rim, then his own, took a giant sip and then held it up in front of his face, frowning.

“This isn’t a wine glass.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Alex, are you ok?”

“Just tired,” he said, closing his eyes and resting his head on the back of the couch.

“Did you sleep last night?”

He shook his head. “Were on the phone with James. He’s in England. It’s later there. I called him in the morning. His morning. It was morning here too, but really nighttime.” He lifted his neck up about an inch to drink more and then flopped it back down. “He can come over on the 18th, if we wanna book the studio time. If you feel ready. Do you think you’re ready?”

That was three weeks away. “I - don’t know how to know.”

“Mm. You’re ready. We’ll still write in the studio. Some people say not to, but I always do. What are you doing next - wait, what day is it? Wednesday? It’s Wednesday. What are you doing Monday?”

“Um, I figured I’d be here,” Alexandra said, thoroughly confused by this conversation.

“I’m doin’ a bit with Mini Mansions. They’re recording right now, I have a verse in one of their songs. You should come along, to the studio, get a feel for what it’s like.”

“Sure. Monday. They won’t mind?”

“Ngh.” Hopefully that meant “no”. Alex looked like he was about to drop his glass, so she reached over and slipped it out of his hands. He let her, with a mumbled “thanks”. 

“Alex, are you sleeping?”

“Yes,” he said, and then moments later he clearly was, his face soft and his breathing even.

Normally - if there was such a thing as normal anymore -- this was the point where Alexandra would have made sure Alex didn’t still have a lit cigarette burning somewhere and then slipped out to risk a DUI on the way home. She did consider this. She was still wide awake though, and still had lyrics buzzing through her mind that wanted to get out. Not the ones that had to do with Alex’s stupid soft sleeping face; those were getting squelched as deep down as she could possibly squelch them. But there were others, and they were good, and it’s not like she had any obligation to leave - he clearly didn’t want her to. She drained what was left in his wine glass, picked up her own and went back to the spare bedroom to keep writing.

She woke to guitar-calloused fingers stroking the side of her face softly. She opened her sleep-sticky eyes to find Alex sitting next to her, looking rumpled and sleepy himself, the back of his hair sticking up.

“‘’ey there.”

“Hey,” she rasped. She looked around, disoriented. It was still dark outside without even a hint of impending dawn. She was leaning against the piano bench, her notebook and Alex’s acoustic guitar pushed to the side a few feet away. “Did I fall asleep?”

“Mm, yeah. I dunno how long ago. Clearly my bad habits are rubbing off on you.”

Alexandra bent her neck, wincing at the crick it had developed from sleeping sitting up. “Ouch. Seriously. How do you not have a million-dollar chiropractor’s bill?”

“Plenty of practice sleeping in odd places. I’m a good napper.” He reached up to squeeze at the sore spot for her, digging his thumb into the knot there. “Thought you’d left. Then I saw your shoes. Get any good writing done?”

“Y-yeah,” she said, her voice trembling when he hit an especially sensitive part. “I think so.” He reached for the notebook when she remembered what had been running through her mind when she’d sat down to write, all the dirty secret thoughts that had been building up, _ tell him what you need, he’ll make the moves, get down on your knees, _ and her hand shot out to stop him. He pushed her fingers off his wrist, gently, but in a way that left no room for argument.

“No shame, remember?” he murmured, but she felt her face growing red, felt suddenly more naked than she yet had in front of him. He looked down at the page, mouthing the words soundlessly as he read. Her heart pounded in her ears. “I know where this goes,” he said. “Exactly where.” He looked around, found a pencil on the floor and added something at the top of the page.  _ Miracle aligner.  _ Then he tossed the pencil aside and looked back at her flushed face. “That’s what I needed. Couldn’t make sense all day. Makes sense now.”

_ Not to me.  _

"Where were you today," she said quietly. He shook his head.

"Somewhere I didn't wanna be. Not a place to take you with."

He was infuriating sometimes, not least because that was what she  _ wanted _ . Wherever that place was, that dark side of the moon he went to and came back from with lyrics that people called "brilliant" and "visionary" and "voice of a generation," that’s where she wanted to go, with him, rather than just get his sloppy seconds when he returned.

She couldn't not touch him. It wasn't even a thought, just an instinct, like maybe she had spotted the secret door and the crack of light coming through and that was the way in, to reach out and touch. He let her trace the hem of his sleeve, down his arm, the hard bone of his wrist. He let her trace her fingers over his, in between the knuckles, and then he grabbed her hands and flipped her over so her back was to the floor, holding her down and climbing over her. He leaned in slowly, almost hesitantly, as if he wasn't sure she was going to let him kiss her. If her hands were free she would have reached up and pulled him close, but he had a firm grip on her, not just at her hands up by her head, but also with his knees pressed to her sides, so that all she could do was wait for him to suck her lower lip into his mouth and open to let him in.

He kissed her slow, lazy, open-mouthed. He licked over her lower lip, bit at it, licked it again to soothe it. She squirmed ineffectually and he tightened his grip on her.

"I think we’re doing this backwards," she whispered when he moved down to kiss along her jaw.

"Backwards?"

"Uh-huh, shouldn't we have made out before you fucked me, not the other way ‘round?"

He moved back up to hover over her lips. "I'm sorry love, you want me to fuck you?"

She shook her head.

"No?" He stroked his thumbs over her wrist bones and she squirmed and arched up to try to get his mouth back, which he allowed, but only for a minute. "Tell me," he said. She just breathed for a minute, words stuck in her chest. “Tell me,” he said again.

"Wanna suck you off."

He sucked in a sharp breath, squeezing his eyes closed.

"Please," she whispered.

"God, yeah," he said, letting her hands go and running his thumb over her lower lip. "You been thinking about it?” She nodded, completely out of words. He arched up off the floor to kick his jeans off and she made as if to lean over him like that, on his back, but he put his hand on her shoulder.

“Not like this, love, you’ll kill your neck.” He pulled himself up on the bench and leaned back, legs spread, hand flexing on his thigh like it was taking all his effort not to grab himself and start without her. “Get --” he stopped for a minute like it was taking all his effort to keep breathing, “get on your knees.”

She scrambled up in front of him, resting her hands on his spread thighs, one of his hands coming to twist in her hair and the other holding himself steady. He ran the head over her lips, trying to tease her but giving in quickly at the bereft little noise she made when he pulled back and she tried to chase him.

“You’re un-fuckin-believeable,” he groaned when she took him in almost all the way at once. “So desperate for it. Try not to fuckin’ come all over yourself this time, I want me turn with you.”

She knew it was probably supposed to be degrading, letting him talk to her like that, getting off on it - on this - but it felt the opposite. Felt like a victory, that he didn’t think he had to treat her like a delicate flower, wasn’t asking if she was sure, trusted that she knew what she wanted. It felt like a victory that he didn’t feel like he had to hold back, didn’t ask her if she wanted him to come in her mouth when she was moaning and drooling around him and so obviously did, pulling back out of her throat so she wouldn’t choke and spilling over her tongue so she’d taste it, stroking under her jaw while she swallowed, running his thumb over the bit that spilled out the side of her mouth and offering it back to her to lick off. He held eye contact with her as he slid back down on the floor to face her and pushed her trembling body backwards again, sliding his tongue into her swollen, sensitive mouth and laughing a little when she whimpered.

“If I could get it up again as quick as I could when I were your age I’d fuck you through this goddamn floor right now,” he growled into her ear as he worked her skirt up and her panties down over her trembling legs. “But I’d have been wasted on you back then...weren’t nearly so good at other things.”

He was pushing her legs apart, clearly about to go down on her, and there was no way this was going to last more than a minute, because she  _ was  _ nineteen and so turned on just from sucking him she was surprised she hadn’t shattered into a million pieces already. Her leg kicked out reflexively when Alex put his mouth on her and the way he grabbed her ankle and held it down only got her more worked up. “Alex -- Alex, I can’t, I can’t --”

“‘s okay,” he murmured, circling her clit with his tongue while he worked his fingers in, and that was as much as she could take, nearly sobbing out his name as he kept licking her through her orgasm until she stopped shaking. He crawled back up her body, where she buried her flushed face in his neck, mumbling “sorry, sorry, I couldn’t, sorry.”

“Shh,” he said, scratching his fingers into her hair. “Shh, don’t be sorry, I were just kidding, love when you come apart like that for me, wanna make you do it again.” 

She shivered. “I don’t think I can.”

“Later, then,” he said into her hair. “Did so good baby, you were so fuckin’ good for me.” They both lay there panting for awhile longer until he rolled off of her and rummaged around in his discarded jeans until he came up with a cigarette and his lighter.

“Can I have one?”

“Yeah, ‘course.” He stuck a second one in his mouth and lit it off the burning end of the first. “That’s me only party trick,” he said, holding it out until she took it between her lips. “Can’t blow smoke rings or any of that theatrical shit.”

They sat there smoking in relative silence, Alex staring off into space again. He’d pulled his briefs back on at some point but seemed entirely unselfconscious about sitting there mostly undressed. He looked way too good for someone who had recently been sleeping on a couch and then rolling around on the floor. 

Eventually he came back to earth and looked over at her. “Are you staying?” he asked.

“If...if you want me to.”

“Only if you want to.”

They stared at each other for a minute until the sides of Alex’s mouth quirked up and then so did Alexandra’s. 

“Come to bed, Alex,” he said quietly. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and followed him into the darkness of his bedroom.


	8. Chapter 8

  
  


He slept on his back, very still and with his arms by his sides, which was a little bit weird. She tried to get out of bed without disturbing him, but the minute she shifted and sat up, he woke up too, looking around surprised as if he wasn’t sure where he was or how he had gotten there. 

She really hadn't intended to stay over again the next night. He made her coffee and rummaged some leftovers out of his fridge and they worked all day, writing furiously. She was planning to leave, maybe even to duck out early before the usual dance began of him ordering dinner and pouring her extra drinks and generally being impossible to say no to. But somehow they had got on the topic of digitized music versus vinyl and her opinion that the vinyl record obsession was a pretentious hipster aesthetic choice. This led to him insisting that she let him play Ziggy Stardust on vinyl for her with the lights off, which was pretentious but also as transcendent as he promised, enough that she let him start it back over from the beginning a second time and agreed with his insistence that it was heard best while laying on the carpeted floor in front of the fireplace, where they both then predictably fell asleep.

Apparently wandering around the house in the night was a pattern, not just the one-off when he’d come to find her writing and napping the other night, because she found him the next morning sleeping outside on the pool cushions with a leaf in his hair. 

It was definitely not cute.

It was so cute it made her want to throw up, which she decided to deal with by leaving him there undisturbed and going home to shower.

She was debating if he would notice whether or not she brought back the pair of his gym shorts that he had lent her to sleep in the other night when her phone lit up. He rarely texted, having once explained this with the statement "I come from the 80's," like that was some other planet. She thought about not answering, she hated talking on the phone, but that seemed both rude and pointless.

"Hey."

"Hi, it's Alex." She thought about reminding him that caller ID was a built-in iPhone feature but that also seemed pointless. "Did you go home?"

"Yeah,” she said. "Only like an hour ago. I’ll come back whenever, just let me know."

"Yeah," he said, "so I wondered if you wanted to work on stuff on your own for the weekend, I really haven't finished what I'm supposed to be recording on Monday and when it is not me own record I can’t get away with my usual shite of changing all the words last minute. They won’t be too happy with me about that."

She hadn't spent a whole day on her own since they had started writing, and that was more than a month ago now. It wasn’t a real question, though, in the sense that there was only one way she could possibly answer. He set the schedule, he made the rules. So sure. He offered to pick her up Monday, because it was crazy to drive two cars anywhere in L.A. if you didn't have to, but she was a little bit relieved when she told him her address and he realized it was in the complete wrong direction. 

She heard him lighting a cigarette and sucking on it. God, she hated talking on the phone. Alex was terrible at it. His tendency to pause for excessive periods of time had its charms in real life but on a cell phone just left her wondering if she'd lost the signal. Also his phone voice was extremely deep and basically a real- life ASMR video and she needed someone to end this painful experience as soon as possible so she could go tear her hair out in peace.

“So...I’ll just come over and we’ll drive from your place.” He didn’t say anything. There was a thump like he might have dropped something. “So... I'll see you Monday?"

"Yes," he said. "Bye." And he abruptly hung up.

Stupid awkward stupid infuriating sexy phone voice stupid boy. Man. Damnit. She flopped herself face-down on her bedspread. She really was picking up his bad habits, she couldn't even string a coherent sentence together.

Her other roommate, Dasha, chose that moment to stick her head through Alexandra's cracked-open bedroom door. 

"Oh good, you're home. Sara says you’re getting laid."

Alexandra lifted her head up from the covers. "Hello to you too."

"Yes yes, hello, hi, what’s new, tell me everything, I'm starved for gossip." Dasha invited herself to flop down on her back on the bed next to Alexandra.

"Don't you have better gossip than me? You definitely do."

"I’ll decide that after you tell me what yours is. Why are you even home? You’re never home in the afternoon."

"Alex had some of his own stuff he had to do," Alexandra mumbled into her bedspread.

"Alex? Alex and Alex? You guys are on a first-name basis now? He finally let you take a day off? Isn't it weird when other people have your same name? It doesn't happen to me as much. Also no dudes are named Dasha so I never have to wonder what it would be like to say my own name in bed. Where did you even meet someone, you’re always at work, when is there even time wait oh my god are you doing it with your boss?"

Alexandra grabbed her pillow and used it to sandwich her head between that and the bed. "He’s not my boss, he’s my...I don’t know. He’s not my boss."

"Oh my god, you are, you little slut! That’s scandalous. I love it.”

Alexandra made an unhappy muffled squeaking noise.

"What? Is it bad? Is his dick small?"

"NO. Dasha please, I can’t talk about this."

Dasha shifted on the bed, probably pulling out her phone from her pocket. "What’s his name again? Turner? Alex Turner? That sounds common, I can't google that and get anything, does he have a middle name? Does he have an insta?”

"You can google him, he’ll come up," Alexandra said miserably, giving up this particular battle. "He doesn't do insta.”

Dasha typed furiously. "Is this him?"

Alexandra rolled over but kept her pillow pressed to her face. It just felt safer that way. She peeked her eyes out over the top to see what Dasha was holding up her phone.

"Yep, that's him."

"Are you kidding me? Hot damn, you’ve been holding out, I'd fuck my boss too if he looked like that. " She swiped a few more times. "Also yeah, those jeans might be too small but his dick is definitely not."

"He’s not my boss!'' Dasha ignored this. Alexandra opened her eyes again to see what was on the screen now. Oh. Well that was just rude. It was really not fair how good guys could look in just jeans and a leather jacket. Really, really not fair. She hid back under the pillow.

"I’m stupid," Alexandra said. "Aren't I?"

"Oh, completely," Dasha said cheerfully, "But that’s why it’s fun. I gotta go.” She hopped off the bed. “Use protection,” she added on the way out, “he looks _dirty_.” She said this like it was the greatest compliment you could possibly pay someone.

Alexandra screamed into the pillow. It felt good. A couple minutes later when she had heard Dasha's car pull out of the driveway, she dropped the pillow and just screamed at the ceiling, which felt even better. 

Having a couple days of space was good. Alexandra barely even knew what her house looked like in the daylight. It gave her some new perspective and she actually did start writing some things on her own that she was proud of. Not only that, but pacing around her room looking for something to do with her hands Saturday night, inspiration struck and she found herself outside with her watercolors, painting like she hadn’t done in weeks. She was a musician, yes, but first and foremost and most accurately she was an artist, and whatever Alex said about having to sit down and work at it - he wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t like he didn’t have a point - but there was really nothing like letting yourself be free and loose, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Then there was the downside to letting her mind wander free. It allowed it to wander all kinds of places and to all kinds of temptations. Like to trying to remember what he looked like all sleepy and rumpled and pinning her down to the floor in the middle of the night, and being unable to remember as accurately as she wanted, and finally giving in to the un-ignorable urge to type his name into Google, which she had resisted doing since before she had actually met him in person because it felt too creepy to do about someone that she actually knew.

By the time Monday morning rolled around she wasn’t sure where she was going to land between A) wanting to jump him immediately or B) having finally gotten some of him out of her system, if only by shamefully stalking him on the internet and rubbing herself raw thinking about him all weekend long. He opened the door and greeted her by sliding an arm around her waist and kissing the side of her face ( _what the hell was that_ ), smelling like cologne and hair product, and when he pulled back she saw that he was dressed up, long hair all slicked back from his face and wearing a blazer with the sleeves rolled up. Option A it was. Option B had been foolishly optimistic.

“You look...nice,” she said. He looked down at himself.

“Thanks. ‘s a mental thing, like. Dressing the part. Realized I hadn’t even had shoes on in like, a week.” He grabbed his car keys off a hook by the door and unhooked his sunglasses from where they’d been stuck between the buttons on his shirt. “Ready?”

Being in the studio was incredible. Magical. There weren’t words. It felt like back in school when Alexandra had been just a little nerd doing musical theater and dreaming of what real life would be like. There was the anticipatory thrill of waiting in the wings about to go on, combined with the adrenaline of being on stage itself. It was like seeing all the backstage secrets overlaid on top of the real thing. She had hardly seen or spoken to anyone besides Alex, or her few brief interactions with Zach or with her roommates in ages, and when one of the sound-board guys waved her over to watch him and explain what he was doing she found herself overflowing with questions, wanting to touch all the knobs and lights and put on the headphones and let all of it wrap around her. He gladly indulged, enjoying her excitement.

And Alex, in his element, was fascinating to watch. He had told her once when they had first met that if he had to pick, he preferred being in the studio because there it was really all about the music without having to put another layer of performance on top of it. She could see that here. He looked comfortable, and completely absorbed in the music. He moved in a different way than he did on stage, as if he was hearing notes somewhere deep in his arms or his neck or his spine and had to move in a way that would let them out. If Alex had shown her a version of himself where he was a live wire, bright and alive but also unpredictable, dangerous and showering off sparks, this was just Alex as it seemed he ought to be: plugged in, grounded, and lit up like a bulb. Not a bulb, actually, that was too ordinary. Like a lighthouse, or a searchlight, or the star on top of a Christmas tree.

They stuck around for awhile after Alex was done recording to watch the others and listen to the preliminary mixes, both perched on a countertop, Alexandra still mesmerized by watching the lights and knobs and tapping into the pulsing energy of the studio, her fingers testing out chord shapes on the leg of her jeans. She thought she felt the shimmer of someone’s eyes on her, maybe Alex’s, maybe not. She ignored it, fearing it would break the spell. Alex’s phone kept buzzing in his pocket and even that felt like it could be the background of a song, like a cloud of ambient noise. It buzzed and buzzed, insistently, and finally he pulled it out and looked at it, ending the song in her head.

“Wanna go to a party? Miles is texting me, he says he has to go show face at some agent’s girlfriend’s friend’s house party or summat like that.”

Alexandra looked over at his phone, which showed all his message previews on the lockscreen, including “please come I miss u”, “bring ur mini-me” and, inexplicably, a string of fruit emojis, all in separate messages. Of course Miles, always overflowing with energy, would be unable to wait to hit “send” between two separate thoughts.

“Do you want to go?” she asked.

“Miles always thinks he can look after me,” he said. “He’ll intend to. But he’ll end up somewhere else. Better if you’ll keep me company. Won’t lose me, will you?”

“No,” she said, though like many things Alex said, this skated just close enough to making sense that she didn’t ask him to repeat himself but couldn’t actually say what she had just agreed to. It would be impossible to lose him anywhere if he stayed lit up and buzzing like he was right now. “Sure. Let’s go.”

She realized at once when they arrived that she should have known better, and also that it was entirely possible Alex had been vague on purpose. This wasn’t like the casual backyard hang he’d brought her to before, where there had been all of fifteen people and they were all actually friends. This was a hot, crowded, noise-complaint-inducing party in someone’s giant white house with an enormous lawn and some kind of fountain in the backyard, more like Cher’s house in _Clueless_ than anywhere a normal person actually lived. Within minutes of getting there she had gotten separated from Alex, who seemed to know no one but be known by at least half the people there and kept getting pulled, literally by the arm, into conversations with different L.A.-looking people, orange tans and sky-high heels and blindingly white teeth. Alexandra’s confidence had been building all day, thinking about how pretty soon she was actually going to be recording something real, her own record, and it took only seconds for that feeling to vanish. It had been awhile since she had felt this out of place, and it wasn’t a feeling that she missed.

Thinking she would touch up her eyeliner or something just to have something to do, she wandered down a hallway that led to a few bedrooms and what was presumably a bathroom. She tried the knob and it turned, but almost immediately gave way to someone slamming back on the other side, an assortment of thumping sounds, a voice saying “damnit, Miles” and another, clearly belonging to Miles himself, calling “Go away! We’re shagging in here.” Before she could process this and react, the door cracked open again and Miles’ nose poked out.

“Oh look, Alex, it’s mini-Alex.” His arm shot out and grabbed her, pulling her through the sliver of open door and into the bathroom, which did not contain anyone shagging, as Miles had so charmingly put it, though that would have been the only situation in which it was large enough for three people to occupy comfortably. Miles shut the door behind her, and locked it this time. “Hello, dollface,” he said, leaning on the sink. “Come join us. Lovely to see you.”

Alex glanced up from where he was perched on the edge of the bathtub, arranging lines of white powder on the back of a thick coffee-table book. “Hello, mini-Alex,” he said. “Miles, lock the damn door next time. I spilled some on the floor. Is it too disgusting if I --”

“Alexander Turner, do not even THINK about finishing that sentence,” Miles interrupted. “You are far too rich to even think about doing cocaine off of some stranger’s bathroom floor.”

“Fine, sorry,” muttered Alex, finishing his task and putting the credit card he was using back in his pocket. His eyes already looked a bit glassy, as did Miles’. Miles finished rolling up a piece of paper that he’d been holding and handed it to Alexandra.

“Ladies first,” said Miles. Alexandra’s eyes flicked to Alex, whose face remained impassive. She sat down on the edge of the tub next to Alex and leaned over. “Hold the other one closed,” Miles added, indicating his own nostril.

It burned, and she sniffled and scrunched her face up with her eyes closed, handing the paper to Alex, who took his turn next, and then Miles, who was straightening up and wiping his nose on the back of his hand when she opened her eyes, the bathroom light suddenly making a blindingly bright halo around his head. She blinked, and it got brighter. 

“Oh,” she said, and blinked again. “... _oh_.”

Miles sighed. “Never quite like the first time, is it,” he said a bit wistfully.

She looked at Alex, who abruptly caught her around the back of the neck and pulled her mouth to his in a wet, lewd, openmouthed kiss. The kind of kiss that was more tongue and teeth than lips, the kind of kiss where you might as well have been stripped naked. Not the kind of kiss you gave someone when you weren’t alone, decidedly not, which didn’t stop her from kissing him back, letting him hold her head and push into her mouth and suck on her tongue. It didn’t seem sufficient to note that she’d never been kissed like that before. If this was a kiss, surely there was some lesser word to describe all the others. It stretched on for an unmeasurable length of time as the buzz of the fluorescent bathroom lights grew louder and louder in her ears until he finally let her go. She swallowed whatever was dripping down the back of her throat.

“Alright now,” said Miles, as if nothing at all unusual were going on. “Let’s go.”

It only took a minute for the crowd to separate her from them again, Miles off like one of those unstoppable rubber bouncy balls, different people grabbing at Alex and trying to get his attention, leaving her feeling unplugged from the buzzing, sparking wire that had been connecting her to him. She drifted towards a few people she recognized from some industry thing or another, or at least thought she recognized, which was all that seemed to matter. They all looked dim by comparison, like someone had flicked a switch off, but it was better than to float around, unconnected, in the quiet darkness between them. She was staring intently at the giraffelike model who had pulled her into a conversation about her vintage sandals, in which Alexandra heard herself saying words but still somehow saying nothing, fixated on the model’s incredibly long eyelashes. Someone came up behind giraffe-girl and grabbed her elbow to pull her into another conversation, which for some reason prompted her to hand Alexandra her violently blue drink before departing. It was mostly full and had a straw. It looked electric, too. It looked like a terrible idea, but she was curious enough that she was about to take a sip of it when Miles interrupted her.

“Ah, don’t do that, you’ll regret it later,” he said, coming up beside her and intercepting the drink on its way to her mouth, dumping it out in a nearby plant. “Are you having a good time?”

“I feel really good.”

Miles grinned and put his arm around her. “I know, love, but are you having a good time?”

She thought about this for a moment. “I can’t tell.”

He laughed and squeezed her tighter. “You are alike, you and Al,” he said. “I’m leaving soon, get yourself home safe, okay?”

“I came with Alex,” she said.

“I know you did, dollface,” said Miles. “I know you did.”

Left adrift again by Miles giving her a final kiss on the cheek and making his way through the press of people to the door, she wandered into another room and sank down on the arm of a white leather couch, biting her nail and half-listening to the pulse of people and music around her, wondering what it would look like in a painting.

“Hey.”

Alex looked disheveled, his hair gel finally failing at its task and a smudge of what looked like someone’s lipstick on his cheek, which briefly made Alexandra feel murderous. She reached for his sleeve and felt a wave of relief wash over her. He let her pull him closer. “Can we leave?” he shouted over the music.

“God, yes.”

  
  
  
  


Alex’s car was parked around the corner, almost invisible in the darkness. He jerked his arms out of his jacket like it was about to strangle him as he got into the driver’s seat. Alexandra slid in next to him, watching him dump his cigarettes, lighter and the remaining coke out of his pockets into the middle console. He scooped out a fingertip’s worth and snorted it quickly.

“Just so I can drive,” he said. He lit a cigarette, started the engine and rolled the window down. She buckled her seat belt. The leg that wasn’t on the gas pedal was bouncing like it hadn’t got the message that it was attached to the rest of his body.

“Sorry,” he said after a minute. “Don’t look so nervous. I’m fine.”

“I know,” said Alexandra.

“I always think I’m gonna be fine at those kinds of parties, and I am at first, I can be that guy,” he said as they merged off the freeway towards his house. “And then that guy leaves. Suddenly. He doesn't say goodbye or anything, either. Every time.”

He only nicked the curb a little bit turning into his driveway and killed the ignition. She unbuckled her seatbelt with shaking fingers and scrambled out of the car after him. 

“Bet you wish you hadn’t come,” he mumbled as he jammed his house keys into the lock. “Thought you was going home with a different guy, not one who acts like he’s trying to bloody kill you both.” He pushed the door open and tossed his rumpled jacket on the couch. “Damnit,” he said, though at what, exactly, she couldn’t tell. “Fuck.” He wiped his hand over his nose and came away with a smear of blood on his fingers. “Fuck,” he said with even more force.

A few half-formed thoughts crisscrossed through her brain, _I know who I came home with_ , _you said no shame_ , _if you can’t come back from where you are, take me with you_ , but instead of actually speaking any of these she twisted her hand in the front of his shirt, tilted her face up and licked his bleeding nostril.

He stared at her. She stared back. His heart thumped under her fist.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey kids don't do drugs and definitely don't get in a car with anyone who's doing drugs and definitely definitely don't lick anyone else's bleeding nostril because you will get AIDS and die. thanks for coming to my TED talk


	9. Chapter 9

One could accuse Alex of being a lot of things. A hell of a lot of things. Unapproachable. Inflexible. Impossible. Infuriating. 

One thing she couldn’t accuse him of was being predictable.

Predictable, after that literally fucking insane thing she had just done, would not have been to gently loosen her fist from his shirt and kiss her fingers, one by one. Predictable would not have been to slowly start undoing the buttons on her blouse while he walked her backwards to the couch, or to kneel down on the floor and unbuckle her sandals and slide them off her feet for her. Predictable would not have fumbled for a minute trying to unhook her bra or pulled her jeans and underwear down her legs so slowly she thought she'd scream. She didn’t move, couldn’t move, just stood there trying and failing to catch her breath while he pulled his already half-unbuttoned shirt over his head, kicked off his own shoes and pants and tugged her down to straddle his lap.

She gasped as he put his hand at the base of her spine and angled her so that they fit together perfectly, sliding along, but not inside her, rubbing her clit every time he rocked her closer to him. He slid his other hand around the back of her neck, pulled her into a kiss even deeper and sloppier and more soul-penetrating than the one he’d given her hours ago at the party. She rocked against him desperately and he pushed back up against her in turn, letting her hands scrabble along his back for something to hold on to and settle on a handful of his hair. He let her lower lip free from where he’d been sucking on it and bumped her nose with his to make her tilt her face up. She forced her eyes back open to lock on his, still huge and dark and glassy. 

“You’re gonna feel really bad tomorrow,” he said. “Really fuckin’ bad.” He pulled her closer, even closer, and her hips jerked in his grip and she grabbed his hair harder, which made his jaw drop open in an immensely satisfying way. “Wanna make you feel good now, while I still can.”

“It does - Al - feels so good, please, Alex,” she babbled, realizing she hadn’t spoken since they’d gotten out of the car, everything pent up in her mind jumbling itself up and coming out at once in a litany of  _ Alex _ and  _ please _ and  _ want you, want you, want you everywhere, Al, please _ .

"Fuck, love your voice, you say my name so good,” he growled. “Can you hold on for me a little longer, baby? Just a little longer? Or is this gonna make you come?"

“ _ Alex _ -”

“Think you can hold on till I get inside you?”

She made a truly embarrassing, desperate noise but nodded her head frantically. He shoved her unceremoniously on to her back and crawled over her. He grabbed her leg to hook it over his hip, felt how hard she was shaking, grabbed her tighter as he slid into her and stayed there, buried deep, panting.

“Tell me,” he said, as he started to rock in and out of her. “Tell me. I wanna hear it.”

“Fuck me.”

“More than that,” he panted. “Tell me -- use that fuckin’ voice of yours baby, love hearing it, tell me what’s going on in that filthy mind, I know you can.”

She clenched her eyes shut, feeling a burn creeping up her spine, of need or embarrassment or both, she didn’t know. She buried her fingers back in his hair.

“Been touching myself thinking about this,” she blurted out and he swore into her ear. “All weekend -- couldn’t stand it --” 

She’d been hovering on the edge of coming and hearing herself tell him her secret, desperate thoughts sent her over the edge, shaking and clenching around him. She sensed Alex tensing up, shifting like he was about to pull out of her and she wasn’t thinking, couldn’t think, just heard herself saying “no, no, no”, grabbing desperately at his back to stop him and he didn’t fight it, just shuddered and held her bruisingly tight as he came inside of her.

Neither of them moved for a long time. Finally she whispered “Alex, you’re crushing me.” He pushed himself up to sit, looking dizzy.

“Gonna be a fuckin’ mess in the morning.” His voice was hoarse. He still had a faint smudge of blood on his face. Now that he wasn’t squashing her lungs anymore she still wanted him closer, even closer than he’d been. She would have crawled inside him if she could. And so when he reached for her, almost needy, with that dangerously soft look in his eyes, she let him guide her head on to his lap and tangle his fingers in her hair, listening to the soft sound of his breathing.

She wasn’t sure if she had been asleep. She shifted and felt Alex’s body jerk and his hand tighten where it had been resting somewhere around her waist.

“Don’t go,” he mumbled.

“Don’t you want to get in bed?”

“Too far away.”

She closed her eyes again. Time must have passed, during which she might have been asleep. She heard her own voice, if it was a dream, and not just her thoughts, and not real.  _ Chalk a line around it _ , her dream-self sang. Under a scorching set of stagelights, or maybe that was the feverishness of the dream, or maybe the sun. It was also the desert. She wasn’t sure. There was sun in the room when she opened her non-dream eyes again. It was awful.

“Are you awake?” Alex asked softly.

“I wish I weren’t,” she mumbled. “I feel…”

“Like you’re lying at the bottom of a pit of despair?”

“Um, yeah. Exactly like that.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

He was playing gently with her hair, the gesture feeling strangely innocent, considering.

“I don’t think I want to do that again,” she said after awhile.

His hand stilled. “Which part?”

She disentangled herself from his lap and sat up to look at him. “The coke. What part did you think I meant?”

He didn’t exactly acknowledge her question. “I always do it again,” he said, looking out the window and then back at her. “Think you’re probably going to come to your senses and have me fuck off, eventually.”

The sudden honesty, the vulnerable look on his face hit her like a punch in the stomach. It only lasted a moment and then it was gone, before she could even think about a response. Like he’d turned the lights off.

-

She sat at the kitchen table, showered and dressed in one of Alex’s shirts and a pair of his gym shorts. He had disappeared awhile ago and she was starting to wonder if he’d passed out in the shower when he wandered into the kitchen, clean and barefoot, and sat down across from her. He opened his mouth as if to start a sentence, frowned, got back up again. He returned to sit down with a pack of cigarettes, stuck one in his mouth, and got up again. He came back with his lighter and shoved the pack towards her. 

He looked serious. Was this it? Was she finally getting the “pull your shit together we need to be professional” lecture she’d almost convinced herself to stop expecting? Because it was a little late, if it was. Especially with her sitting here wearing his clothes, the morning-after cliche of it all.

“It’s a totally different experience when you record at a studio outside the city, especially the ones where you stay,” he said finally. “And sleep there, I mean. Like in Joshua Tree. Starts getting hard to tell what’s real and what you dreamed.”

She was going to get whiplash trying to keep up with wherever his head was at. 

“When we was recording our album out there, Josh got us all these mushrooms. You know. Everyone takes them and wanders off to different parts of the place, it’s a bunch of buildings and random shit in the desert, and I started vomiting, must ‘ave been four or five times, where there’s nothing left to come up and I were tripping balls on top of it. I were lying on the floor somewhere for I don’t know how long by myself, just fucking puking and tripping and wanting to die and outta nowhere Josh’s wife shows up, Brody, she’s a musician too and a fuckin’ vision, like some kinda punk rock angel — her voice is deeper than mine — and she literally picks me up like I’m a fuckin’ ragdoll and carries me inside and puts me in bed and says “good night, Sleeping Beauty” and then just fuckin’ vanishes into the desert.” He paused. “When I woke up I’d written a whole page of lyrics like nothing I’d written before. Didn’t even remember doing it. Like I’d actually died, or been someone else, that fairy story where the girls go dance through their shoes all night or summat.”

“Alex,” she said when he’d paused long enough that he seemed to be done. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think we should go to the desert. Bring the 8-track and the acoustic. Record some vocals. Or just write.”

“Why?”

“To be someone else for a bit.”

Well. She couldn’t argue with that.


	10. Chapter 10

She remembered being told once when she was young not to look out the window when she awoke from a dream in the middle of the night, so that she could continue the same dream when she closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to go back to her house, or even get in her car, fearing it would break the spell. The washing machine beeped from its closet in the corner of the kitchen where she’d thrown in her clothes from last night after collecting them from the various places they had ended up strewn around the living room before Alex could get to them. Alex was thumping around in the spare room, presumably trying to wrangle his 8-track recorder into its case. Every once in awhile she caught snatches of his voice as he talked to himself, though even lingering at the door she couldn’t quite make out about what. It was cracked open only a little bit; she couldn’t see in, and figured he couldn’t see her, if he had even been paying attention.

She was slowly starting to feel less terrible, like her brain had stopped hoping that it was getting another tsunami of external dopamine any time soon, though she still had this kind of weird feeling lingering in her chest. It was sort of a heaviness but also sort of a lightness, or maybe neither, a floating, as if she were in an oddly realistic dream that was sort of sad, but for no reason. It floated her to Alex’s bedroom door, to twist the doorknob and wander inside. The air was still slightly humid from the shower. She pondered the sparse bedroom, the neatly-made bed, the nightstand, the dresser.

She was sitting on the floor when she heard the creak of Alex pushing the door open further.

“Whatcha doin’?” he drawled, sounding faintly amused.

“Getting dressed,” she said, tightening the laces on the pair of his sneakers she’d found under the bed. They were too big, but not by so much that she couldn’t keep them on her feet. She had tucked the t-shirt she was already wearing into a pair of his jeans, belted them tightly under her ribs and rolled up the bottoms. 

He blinked a couple of times. “I don’t wear socks with those.”

“That’s gross,” she said, but finished tying double-knots in the laces and stood up. “I’m ready.”

He squinted at her like he couldn’t quite focus his eyes, but then walked over to his closet, rummaged around for a minute and tossed a leather jacket at her. “It gets cold at night.”

-

“You’re going to tell me when it’s time to stop, right?”

This was odd, because they had just started driving, and he was the one who knew where they were going. But when she took her eyes off the horizon and looked at him she realized that wasn’t what he was talking about.

“I sort of thought you would. I keep thinking you will, I mean.” 

“You keep thinking I will?”

“Well, yeah.”

He glanced over at her. “That’s crazy. Why would you think that?”

“Because. Because! I don’t know, you’re all like I’m Alex, I’m broken and mysterious, bet you didn’t know who took you home from this party, can’t take you to my dark place, I have to go there and be dark and broken and mysterious by myself. I keep expecting you to freak out and push me away and give me some dumb speech about how I shouldn’t go falling in love with you because you’ll just break my heart or some condescending shit like that.”

She expected one of his long silences but it was relatively quickly that he responded, “I weren’t worrying about that. Should I have been?”

“No,” she said.

“I know you don’t need me to worry about you. I’ve told you that.”

“Yeah. You have. In bed, though. Wasn’t sure you meant it.”

“Easiest place to say what you mean, I think.”

It was her turn to take a very Alex-like length of time to respond. He raised an eyebrow. “Assumes you know what you want. Or how to say what you want,” she said finally. She felt her face getting red and looked away, out the window.

“I know what you want,” he said, and he didn’t seem to intend it to be suggestive but there was suddenly a lot less air in the car.

“Do you?”

“You want to go down in the dark place, yeah? Where you come out with stories of snake pits and witches and war films on the moon. Where you can say all the things you think you shouldn’t say and want all the things you think you shouldn’t want. Don’t think that I don’t want to go there with you. But you don’t need me to take you. You would have gotten there eventually.”

That was it, exactly, that she hadn’t known how to say. She hadn’t known he was even paying attention to her that closely. She’d thought he was off in his own world half the time they were together. More than half. How did he do that?

“That’s not the dark place I didn’t want to take you, love,” he went on. “There’s more than one. The other one, it’s like driving into the horizon chasing something that you think you’re going to catch, and then you do catch it, but it’s just the vanishing point where you fall over the edge and there’s nothing.” He shook his head, as if to banish the image. “Sooner or later, going on like this, writing together and...doing what we’ve been doing, sooner or later you’ll get too close to that point. Where you might lose yourself. You’ll know, because you know yourself, Alexandra, and you don’t get easily lost. Don’t tell me that’s not true. You’ll know, and then it’s going to be time to stop. And you’ll tell me. Alright?”

“I’m not scared,” she said.

“I’m not telling you to be scared. I’m just telling you to stop me when we get there. Cause I don’t -- I don’t know myself like that. And I don’t ever see it coming till I’ve gone past the edge.”

She felt like the air had been knocked out of her lungs.

“Alexandra,” he said. “Tell me.” Tell me. In the same insistent way he’d told her to tell him what was going on in her mind,  _ more _ ,  _ tell me _ .

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. At the vanishing point. But not before.”

His brow was still furrowed, but she saw the corners of his mouth twitch up like he was holding in a smile. “No,” he said. “Not before.”

_ War films on the moon.  _ She hadn’t even told him that one.

“Alex,” she said, hearing her voice take on a dangerous tone almost like his, “did you read my notebook?”

“You’re wearing my shoes,” he said, as if that were even remotely comparable.

Her jaw dropped. She stared at the side of his face incredulously. He kept driving placidly, like he had no idea why she might possibly be mad.

“You...you…” she sputtered, at a complete loss for words.

“Complete dickhead?” he supplied, looking thoroughly amused.

“Yes! I can’t believe you!” She kept opening and closing her mouth, unable to settle on something that would actually express her exasperation. How could he go from explaining her own thoughts back to her like they were a book of poetry to being a completely unrepentant asshole in the space of approximately ten seconds? It was really incredible. “What if that were my journal or something?”

“Dear diary,” he said in a falsely high voice, “Alex is a complete dickhead. If he weren’t so handsome and tall and devastatingly charming I would murder him in his sleep.”

“You are neither tall nor devastatingly charming,” she said. If she hadn’t been glaring daggers at him, she might have missed him shifting slightly, adjusting himself, or the faint tinge of red that was creeping up his ears. But she didn’t. “Is this turning you on?”

“You being angry? Yes,” he said, without a hint of embarrassment. “Quite a bit.”

She was pretty sure the English language did not contain words encompassing the mess in her brain right now. Probably no other languages did, either. Lacking any other particular option, she did what he likely expected her to, which was to cross her arms petulantly and stare out the window. “How much farther?”

“Not very. There’s a Super-8 where I’ve crashed before and not been murdered or caught bedbugs. Figured we’d stay there tonight, figure out tomorrow how much we feel like roughing it. How opposed are you to sleeping on the ground? I brought some blankets.”

“I’ve slept on your living room floor like five times by now,” she reminded him.

“Mm. Yeah. I really am a terrible date, aren’t I?” He drove on, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to music only he could hear and continuing to look annoyingly pleased with himself.

-

She felt like a dirty mistress waiting for a secret motel tryst, sitting in the car while he went into the office of the Super-8 off the freeway.  _ This is a dirty motel tryst, _ said the annoying voice in her head. 

Damnit. Truthfully, the fact that being angry at him kind of turned her on was something she’d accepted weeks ago at this point. And if he wasn’t aware of that yet, he was likely to be soon, because they were alone in the middle of nowhere and she wanted him and he wanted her and pretending otherwise was just delaying the inevitable, wasn’t it?

_ Told you so. _

You’re a sick fuck, she thought to herself, popping open his glove compartment to pass the time. It was completely empty except for his registration and insurance paperwork, sealed in a plastic bag. “Alex, you’re a psychopath,” she muttered, not sure if she was referring to him or herself at this point. She jumped as he tapped on the window, holding up a key card.

  
  


-

He flicked on the light as they walked in, eyes falling on the bed, the TV, the ugly patterned armchair. She shut the door behind them and slipped her feet out of his shoes. He had stopped just a couple steps inside the room, looking concerned.

“What?”

“Should I have asked if you wanted your own room? Or at least two beds?”

Was he serious? What had that conversation in the car even been, if not her telling him that she still wanted to be doing this? Had he had a completely different experience of that exchange? Either that, or he really had no idea that she was, unfortunately, more than capable of wanting him and wanting to punch him in his stupid handsome face at the same time. 

By way of an answer, she pulled her shirt over her head and let it drop on the floor. She undid the belt buckle holding his oversized jeans on her hips and kicked her legs free of them, too.

He swallowed. “Guess not.” His eyes dropped visibly down her body and back up again. “Thanks for not borrowing my underwear, that’s a little kinky even for a sick fuck like me.”

“Shut up, Alex,” she said quietly as they drifted closer to each other as if pulled by a magnet. He shoved her back on the bed, which made an alarming squeak, and grabbed both her thighs to push them apart as he climbed up after her. He pressed his thumb into the dip at the side of her knee and she gasped, loudly. Alex smiled wickedly and pressed his mouth there.

“Knew you’d have more of those,” he mumbled against her skin. He kissed his way up the inside of her thigh, sucking, using his teeth, moving his mouth up to bite at her hipbone as he hooked his fingers in the waistband of her underwear to pull it off and pressed his mouth to her. 

She vaguely registered that she was making a lot of noise. A  _ lot _ of noise. So was Alex. She could feel it as much as she could hear it as he pushed his fingers in her, then his tongue, sucking on her clit, and they weren’t alone in his house anymore and everyone else in this place was going to know exactly what they were doing and she couldn’t bring herself to care in the slightest. She couldn’t get a good hold of the slippery bedspread and she couldn’t reach his shoulders so she grabbed his hair and then he really moaned, loud, and jerked himself out of her grip, panting.

“Sorry,” she said hoarsely, “did I hurt you?”

Alex’s face was red and his whole body was shaking. Did he always get that flushed when they were fooling around? So far, she’d been too absorbed in her own self-consciousness to notice. He wiped his hand over his mouth.

“Gonna fuckin’ blow in my pants if you keep doing that,” he said, and there was no rational reason for that to be sexy but it really, really was. At some point he had undone his fly to take the pressure of his straining erection and she could see it jerking a little, leaking through the fabric. She looked up at his face. “You’re not the only one who gets turned on by going down,” he muttered, looking almost sheepish.

She yanked on the hem of his shirt and he pulled it over his head as she tugged his pants the rest of the way off and finally got her hand around the hot, soft skin of his cock, and she was pretty sure that was herself that she heard making those stupid whimpering noises but still didn’t care. Alex was breathing so hard he sounded like he was going to pass out, resting his forehead on hers and watching her hand work over him.

“Alex, baby,” he said, gently pushing her hand off. “You gonna let me inside you again?” She nodded. “You gonna let me come inside you again?” His voice was shaking, too.

“Fuck yeah,” she breathed.

“‘Cause you’re mine, right?” 

She understood, in that moment, what that meant. Not that she was  _ his _ , not that he owned her, nobody owned her, or ever would. But she was his like a secret is, something that existed only as long as it was theirs alone, and would vanish the moment it wasn’t.

“Tell me,” he said, watching her face, and she did,  _ I’m yours, I’m yours, however many times you want me to say it, I’m yours. _

-

She dreamed herself singing again, not unlike the dream she had the previous night, where she was in a strangely-lit place, and the light somehow had a sound, and it would get brighter and block out her voice for a moment, and it would dim and her voice would ring clear again. She heard Alex’s voice harmonizing with her, in the dream, and then she heard his voice for real, saying her name.

“Alex, wake up. Alexandra. Alexandraaaaa.” He was propped up on his arm, looking at her. She looked around, confused for a moment, then remembered where they were. 

“Is it morning?” she said.

“Early. I’m sorry. We should get up, though, it’s best when the moon is still out, I want you to see it.”

“You and the moon,” she mumbled, but let him urge her out of bed, into the shower, into the car with cups of free motel-lobby coffee. He already had his sunglasses on and she put hers on too, unready to face even the tiny peek of sunshine making its way through the car windows.

“So you’ve written out here before? Besides when you guys did your album at...I forget what you called that place.” 

“Rancho de la Luna,” he said as he easily navigated them to what seemed to be a largely unoccupied, out-of-the-way campground with a cluster of trees and some picnic tables. “Yeah. Just once or twice,” he said. “When I needed to shake meself off. Always by meself, before.”

The closest tents and campers, only barely visible in the early morning light, were at least a couple hundred feet away, maybe more. Much too far away for anyone to hear them or be bothered. 

Neither of them spoke for a while. Alex parked the car under a tree and Alexandra settled herself on top of the picnic table, sipping her bitter motel coffee and watching as he took his acoustic out of the trunk and started tuning it, mouthing something to himself. It was barely light outside and the moon was still clearly visible, flattening out the colors almost as if it were an old photograph. 

Alex started strumming one of the songs they’d written together, one they were calling “Girlie”, and after a few bars she joined in.

“That sounded great. Wish I’d had the tape out,” he said when they’d finished.

“It’s alright,” she said. “We can do it again.” Alex strummed a few more chords, warming up.

“I had a dream last night,” he said. “We were in some kind of place, and the light was all weird, and you were singing Risk, but it was like...the sound kept going in and out, but it weren’t bad. It were almost as if that were how it was supposed to sound, like you were underwater, or in space, or a dream while you’re awake.”

She stared at him.

“What?”

“How did you know that?” she asked slowly. “Did I...I didn’t write that down, did I? Was that in my notebook? Don’t fuck with me, Alex, that’s not funny.”

He gave her an odd, penetrating look. “What are you talking about?” There was no sign on his face that he was messing with her.

“I swear I dreamed that too. Not totally the same, but with the recording going in and out, and the light, like a dream within a dream.”

“Now you’re fucking with me,” he said.

“No,” she whispered. 

He played a couple more notes, absently, watching the last bit of the moon disappear out of the sky.

“So are we there yet?” he said, almost too quiet for her to hear. “Over the horizon? Where you drop off the edge and vanish?”

“No way,” she said, grinning and getting up to get the tape recorder out of the car and put it on the table between them. “Not even close. Start playing.”

And he did.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I'm muddling around in the next actual chapter, here's a random little interlude into Al's mind.

_ Alex knows perfectly well what a complete dickhead he is. He’s always been this way, even back when he was a skinny, spotty little dickhead-in-training teaching himself to play the guitar. He started out split in two. In one way he felt better than everyone else around him, smarter, funnier, under-appreciated. At the same time he was still absorbing what it meant to him to get turned down, ignored, thrown over for guys who were taller, handsomer, more outgoing, more anything. Maybe if he had gone to uni he would have been able to move beyond it, slowly grow some confidence in himself, meet some girls who liked him for his thoughtful contributions in poetry seminar or his skill at mixing a mean margarita. But that never happened, and here he is, nearly twenty-nine - face it, nearly thirty- and an absolute fucking mess. _

_ He knows better than to fall into the trap of thinking that she’s just a kid, all innocent and just waiting for him to get his filthy handprints all over her pristine little soul or some nonsense like that. Hell knows he wasn’t anything resembling innocent at nineteen, running wild around the continent, drinking, kissing strange girls, then swapping with Matt or Miles for whatever strange girl they had been kissing moments ago, drinking more, dropping their trousers at innocent passerby and then running off absolutely paralyzed with laughter. What dumb little fucks they’d been.  _

_ It’s just another way to engage in the emotional masturbation of guilt, to convince himself that he’s done something wrong or bad to her. At least, to convince himself that he’s done something wrong by sleeping with her. She’s an adult, right? He would certainly never have tolerated anyone telling him at the same age that he wasn’t. He would never have tolerated anyone implying that he couldn’t decide that kind of thing for himself. He figures she deserves the same. That’s not what’s worrying him. _

_ She trusts him. That’s what’s fucking terrifying. He’s never had a girlfriend that trusted him. Alexa was always in charge, steering him in this direction or that. She knew he didn’t know or care about publicists, appearances, calling the paps on purpose, and so she didn’t trust him to have any say in those kinds of things. She told him where to go, what to wear, how to act, and he did as she said, because he didn’t trust himself either. Arielle was nothing like that, she was fun, easygoing, but she didn’t trust him one bit more than Alexa had. She knew she was dating Alex Turner, sex-dripping rockstar, and her lightheartedness was transparent - she knew he was going to screw her over somehow, and it was just a question of when and how. With that hanging over his head, he couldn’t help but deliver. _

_ Also, perhaps most importantly, Alexandra is not his girlfriend. _

_ And he’d be doing her wrong to let her be - let her be? Like it’s a favor? Yeah, he is an arrogant prick, and oh yeah, there it is, here comes the martyr complex, just like she’d said - poor me, poor Alex, I’m so broken, I’m so unloveable. But that’s not really what it is. It’s that he needs, he has all this empty space to fill up, needs too much and she’s so willing to give it to him. She’s so willing to pick up all his split-apart pieces and see the way they might fit together in a song or a story or a painting. And that’s the part he knows is wrong, not him fucking her (she asked for it, fucking begged for it, sure maybe not the first time, but all the times after), not that he drove drunk and high with her in his car (she could have called a cab, though it’s true he should have called one first), not that he’s pretending not to notice her picking up his smoking habit when he knows she didn’t smoke before, not any of that, because she knows what the dark and rotten and dirty sides of him look like, but not the empty part. Not that. _


	12. Chapter 12

  
  


Alexandra was a bit of a dreamer, sure. Weren’t all artists? Didn’t you have to be? But she wasn’t completely oblivious. She vaguely realized that this probably wasn’t healthy, for two people to have spent the past weeks almost entirely in each other’s company. Sure, she had seen her roommates here and there, and she and Alex had spent that weekend apart and then gone to the studio with Mini Mansions and that party with Miles, but those had been brief interludes. If anything, they’d left the two of them more entwined in each other by the sheer contrast of it. She thought about that night at the party, spending the whole evening feeling like there was some invisible tether pulling her back to him, like she could only relax when he was within reach. It wasn’t like a romantic, I-wanna-hold-your-hand thing. It felt...feral, like some kind of addiction, wanting to taste him, put her tongue in his mouth, swallow his come, lick his sweaty neck while he was inside of her. And he was an enabler. He would just sit there and let her, he let her do anything she wanted. He let her creep her hands up underneath his shirt to touch his stomach, take the cigarette out of his mouth and finish it even though he would have given her one of her own; he let her crawl into his lap and suck on his fingers, not even really as foreplay, just because she wanted to, needed to, for no reason she could articulate. 

Maybe he was right, or maybe it was just a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it had made her feel like someone else to be out there in the middle of nowhere with him. Who that someone else was, she wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t Alex McDermott, shy musical-theatre nerd from Portland. It was someone whose thoughts flowed easily into lyrics, into the songs they’d written out in the dry desert air, letting her mind drift out into the horizon and flip itself around and come back to her.

It was someone whose voice slipped easily into the dreamy, space-lounge-singer-witch vibe that she wanted on the demos they were recording back at Alex’s house, in the remaining couple days before they were meant to go to the studio. Someone else who was able to relax when Alex adjusted her fingers on the fretboard of her guitar, maybe because he was someone else too - not impatient, not insisting, just guiding until she heard what he heard and saw what he saw.

She wasn’t sure how long that someone else could keep existing here though, in the studio, being rudely confronted with something at least resembling reality.

-

Alex had been right that it was a good idea for her to come along when he was recording Vertigo, for real objective reasons, not just their recent inability to be away from each other for long. She’d already seen the space, so it wasn’t so bizarre and terrifying and science-fiction-y, with all the sliders and lights and beeping and sealed-off glass rooms. It was drab, though. Why did people insist on beige paint? What was the joy in beige? Alex watched her, bemused, as she taped a bundle of sage to the wall.

“It brings good juju,” she explained.

Alex looked at James as if for some kind of confirmation.

“I don’t think we have juju in England,” James said. “Just...rain.”

“It rains in Portland all the time,” Alexandra protested. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“Alright, alright, come on,” Alex said. “Let’s go, I want to get started.”

  
  


Alexandra had wondered how Alex planned to get what they had recorded with his vintage analog equipment onto something they could actually mix and use, but obviously he knew what she didn’t, which was that the studio had all the cords and adapters he needed to get it going and play it for James. James’ uninhibited enthusiasm was reassuring that she and Alex hadn’t just been living in some kind of shared delusion; he immediately started tapping his hand on his leg, trying out drum rhythms.

-

She had vaguely known but hadn't really processed how long Alex and James had known each other, and how much they had worked together before. She had worried a bit that he wouldn't be into the kind of analog, all-one-take vibe that she and Alex had been using, but soon realized that it was probably James that Alex had gotten that style from in the first place. They had done a couple vocal takes, experimented with some percussion, and now James and Alex were batting back and forth ideas while Alexandra listened. 

"I remember this one when he was this big," James said, holding his finger and thumb an inch apart. "Back when he was still familiar with the concept of washing his hair.”

"Stuff it, James," Alex said, throwing a pencil across the sound board at him, but missing and narrowly avoiding hitting Alexandra in the head with it.

“Hey!"

"Ah, don't lean on that," James said, reaching over to hit the button that was lit up where her elbow had hit it. "Recording all our secrets. Very bad if we get subpoenaed by the American government."

Curious, Alexandra hit the button to play what had just recorded, picking up a faded version of her voice as she had giggled and then dodged the flying pencil.

"I kind of like this." she said, "Like it was an accident, but it makes it sound sort of real and gritty, I like that."

James tapped out another rhythm with his pencil. "Unedited. Yeah. I see how you two have been working well together. Come a ways since you and Miles were trying to be Lennon and McCartney, eh, Al?"

Alex rolled his eyes. "I think we prefer to consider this our “gone to India and got reborn Lennon-and-McCartney” phase. We might do another Puppets record. Was talking to him about it awhile back, maybe its the right time."

She hadn't known that. Strange, almost, that his mind might have been somewhere else, dreaming up another record, while she had thought of nothing but these songs for weeks. Then again, this was her baby, her entire life’s work so far, and for him… who knew? A side project. A distraction. She tried to cut herself off from that train of thought.

-

James looked over the scribbled list of songs that they had given him. “Okay,” he said. “So we have vocals from the past two days of these,” he tapped three of them with his pencil, “and the guitar track and most of the rhythm. Did you give me a demo of this one, though?” He put his pencil next to Alex’s scribbled “Miracle Aligner”.

“I wasn’t sure about that one being ready --” Alexandra started, at the same time Alex said “No, I can play it for you.” Their eyes met. They hadn’t come back to it since the last time they’d worked on the lyrics together, but she had heard Alex playing and singing it on his own. She had sort of been thinking it might be better to leave it off, let him have it. She’d thought from the beginning that it didn’t fit with the other things they were writing. He was already pulling one of the guitars from the lineup along the wall, though, so she climbed into the armchair that he’d vacated for a stool and watched him.

It was a beautiful song, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t just because she liked looking at Alex playing it. James was listening intently, watching Alex in a way that seemed to Alexandra like a professional musician ought to -- following each movement of his fingers, the shape of his mouth. 

The sunglasses in Alex’s shirt pocket were pulling the unbuttoned collar down and she saw James’ eyes move away from the guitar and fall on a mark on Alex’s collarbone. A purpley-red mark that Alexandra realized, with a twist of her stomach, was pretty much the shape of her teeth. She saw James frown to himself, as if thinking something that didn’t quite add up, then go back to watching Alex’s fingers.

Alex finished the song with a final strum of the strings and looked up at them. They were all quiet for a minute.

"You hate it, "Alex said.

"No, no," said James. “It’s lovely. It doesn't really fit with the rest of the record’s sound, though. Is that what you were saying earlier, Alexandra?"

"Sort of," she said, not sure whose side to take, even though it was James taking her side, technically.

“We wrote it together, though,” Alex said, frowning.

“It really sounds better with your voice,” she protested. “You know, like. Clearer. Sweeter. I can’t get mine there, not yet.”

“It does work when you put your Beatles voice on,” James added.

Alex ran a hand through his hair. "For what, though. Not the Monkeys, not at all."

“I can try it,” Alexandra said. “Again, I mean.”

“We shouldnt waste it,” Alex said, looking perturbed.

James looked back and forth between them. "Table it for now," he suggested. "We can come back to it.'' He hit play on the next demo he had queued up. "You seeing much of Miles with you both in L.A.?" he asked Alex casually.

"’'Course."

James hummed, looking thoughtful. While his back was turned, Alexandra caught Alex's eye and nodded at his drooping shirt collar. He glanced down at the hickey, buttoned another button, then gave her an absolutely filthy-looking grin before James turned around again.

-

Alexandra was unlocking her car when Alex came up behind her, making her jump and turn around ready to fight off an attacker before she realized it was him. He grabbed her hips and pressed her up against the car door.

"You gave me a hickey. You little vampire."

She pulled down the collar of his shirt to look at it closer. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said heatedly. "I want another."

She swallowed. "James saw it. Do you think he..."

Alex shook his head. "I've known James a decade, I know what he’s thinking. It don't have anything to do with you."

Surprisingly, she wasn't sure that was what she had wanted to hear. "What..."

He shook his head again, the way he did when he was thinking something that he didn’t want to tell her. "Are you coming over?"

"I have to go home first."

Alex slipped his hand around to the bare skin above the waist of her jeans. "I’ll come with you to yours, then."

He had never been to her house. She wasn't sure he had ever even been near her house.

"Alex, no, it's fine, I'll be fast." 

"Why? Are your roommates home?" 

"Probably."

"We’ll be quiet, then.” He shifted closer to her, bent his head to bite at her jaw. “I’ll keep you quiet.” She bit her lip. It was dark, and no one was really around, but they were technically in public. She weighed this with the potential emotional minefield of him coming to her house, where - well. The Alexandra she was trying to keep being, despite all the forces against working against her, that wasn’t the Alexandra that lived there. 

But she didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary away from the feeling of him sliding his hands underneath the back of her shirt, either.

"Okay. Okay."

  
  



	13. Chapter 13

It didn't look like anyone else was home. The driveway was empty, the windows dark. Everything about him, down to his car, shiny and black and meticulously clean, looked like it didn't belong here. Alex looked completely at ease, though, leaning against the porch railing and watching her unlock the two locks on the front door. She didn't turn any of the lights on as he followed her through the kitchen and up the squeaky stairs that led to her bedroom. 

This was definitely a mistake, what was she even going to do with him here? Like, obviously, there was... that. But as soon as anyone else got home she was probably going to get a teasing ALEX HAS A BOY IN THE HOUSE text, no doubt complete with some kind of suggestive vegetable emoji. The prospect of being reminded that this was the part of her world occupied by things like roommates, however well-meaning they were, felt uncomfortably like hearing your alarm ringing in your dream and knowing you were about to wake up.

She also couldn’t stop wondering, with a twinge of something disturbingly like jealousy, who James apparently was thinking had given Alex that hickey. Not that she wanted him to suspect her - as far as she knew, no one had any idea about any of this, except maybe Miles - but still.

Alex was paying no attention to the various revealing things around the room that were distracting her with the possibility of what they exposed about her - her childish collection of comfort books, her stupid pink blanket, her amateurish paintings on the walls. He slipped his shoes off and sprawled out on her bed. He was hard already, making no effort to hide it. “Come here,” he said.

She couldn’t not. It was like he had some sort of spell on her, how else had he managed to convince her to bring him here like this? Just by sliding his hands under her shirt like a junior high boy at a dance, telling her he wanted her to bite his neck again. She couldn’t even remember doing it, some time last night probably, when he’d had her laid out on his bed, three fingers inside her,  _ you’re so fuckin’ wet, wanna see you lose it for me, gonna give it to you so good you’ll be sore for days. _

Somehow she was on her bed, crawling up between his spread legs, before she even realized what she was doing. He reached for her immediately, brushed his thumbs over her nipples and she moaned, loudly, grateful no one else was in the house. He kept circling them with his thumbs, staring at her with a wide-eyed, awestruck look on his face.

“Feels good, don’t it?” She forgot what she had been thinking about, wasn’t thinking anything, not enough even to nod. "No one else ever really touched you like this, huh? Didn't know they were so sensitive till I got my hands on you that first time?"

He didn't seem to require an answer, which was good because she didn't think she could make her mouth work at this point.

"You don't know what this does to me... makin’ you lose control when I’ve barely fuckin’ touched you...incredible how you can let go so easy...that you trust me... don’t think about it, just feel...“

His eyes were on her, but he still somehow looked far away, almost like he was talking to himself. She was only half-processing what he was saying, not sure it was a compliment. It was true, she was a mess the minute he got his hands anywhere on her, it was easy for her to just let herself feel and not use her brain. And she was probably going to come just from this, just like the first time he’d touched her, and that probably wasn’t normal, there was probably something wrong with her, but it was too late now to care. He got a harder grip on her and she rocked her hips up, trying to get more friction where she was aching for him. He kept stroking her slowly, agonizingly, as she met his eyes.

"I’m right, aren’t I? No one else ever touched you like this? Made you come like this?"

"Just you," she breathed.

"Bet I'm the only one you've ever let come in that sweet little cunt of yours, too. Am I right?"

Of course he was right, why did he need her to say it? It was reckless, that she kept letting him do it, and she knew that but completely lacked the ability to care, and he knew he brought that out in her, didn’t he? Or did he think she was that insane all the time? "You know," she managed, squeezing her eyes closed. 

"Am I? Answer me, baby, I wanna hear it."

"You know you are, just you, it's just been you, Alex." She wished he didn’t know this about her, but he knew, he’d known, hadn’t he, since the very beginning, so what was the point? He moaned at that, though she wasn't even touching him. A cloud of a thought floated past her - they’d been so in sync the past weeks, half-thinking the same thoughts, she was jealous, admit it, she was, of nothing, of him, of everyone and no one in particular all at once. “Why?” she panted, out of breath. “Would you be jealous?"

"Yes," he growled. “Fuck, yes. Come on, baby, lose it for me, show me how good I make you feel, show me you’re mine.”

If there was something she’d wanted to hide, bringing him here, she had forgotten about that, too.

\--

“ _ I’m crying through the credits of a show, that I’ve seen a bunch of times before. _ ”

She finished the verse, rolling her shoulders out, cracking her neck. She took her headphones off to look at Alex for some kind of reaction. He was chewing rather violently on a guitar pick. She was pretty sure that one was hers - it had glitter on it, and now looked unusable, full of teeth marks - but let it go.

“Are you sure you want to say it like that?” Alex asked.

“Like how?”

He frowned. “It’s just so revealing, all the ‘I’ rather than a ‘you’ or a ‘her’. It says exactly what you’re thinking with you as the narrator. Like a first-person story, everyone always assumes it’s about the author. That can just be a lot once it’s out there, you know?”

“It is about me. I like saying exactly what I’m thinking.”

“I know,” he said, rubbing his hand over his forehead. He gave her a secret-looking little smile that made her shiver slightly. “But it’s different when it’s on a record that anyone can hear and have an opinion on, you know? I mean, you don’t know, that’s why I’m just, you know, saying. From experience.”

“I just have to feel it to sing it properly, you know?” She tried it the way he had suggested, more vague, more pronouns, and it just didn’t sound right to her ears. She tried it again, her way. Her voice broke, and she stepped back from the mic and cleared her throat.

She felt off. Disconnected. She could hear it in her voice when she tried again. It was shaky, pitchy, not the way she wanted to sound.

She was still thinking about yesterday. They had never really discussed Miracle Aligner after James told them to table it. It wasn’t the song, the song was good. It just wasn’t Alexandra, any version of her - the shy nerd, the space-witch-lounge singer, the loose, desert-warm Alex-Alexandra amalgam, any of those. Yes, she had written those lines,  _ open your eyes _ ,  _ get down on your knees _ ,  _ tell him what you want _ , but it wasn’t hers. The last two, Alex had seen her writing and just decided they belonged in this song. Maybe she wanted them somewhere else. She didn’t know where, but what if she had? The rest of them, Alex’s lines, they were Alex’s. She had never felt fifty feet tall. She’d seen Alex feeling that way, maybe. But she had never felt it herself. She had to understand what an emotion was, before she could sing it. Otherwise it just sounded hollow, empty. And she couldn’t just let that one go, because it was coming up in all his input to her today, too. He wanted her to sing like he would sing and talk like he would talk, and there were times when she just couldn’t. 

She should probably work on the one they were calling “‘Til you’re mine” today - jealousy, inadequacy. That’s what she was feeling. Jealousy of what, even? She wasn’t really sure. Maybe the freedom Alex had to tell her last night that he’d be jealous if someone else had touched her like he did, to make her admit out loud that her experience with all of this was largely limited to him, while at the same time getting away with avoiding her questions when she tried to find out about who he had been with before, who he insinuated he’d gotten involved with working in the past, who else might have marked him up with their lips and their teeth like she had. It’s not that she wanted to be jealous, he wasn’t her fucking boyfriend, but she wanted the right to be. If he was allowed, she wanted to be allowed too. She was ready to pour all that out into her lyrics, _years hanging over me,_ _she suits you alright, I won’t stop until you’re mine._ But Alex had said they were recording this one this afternoon, so that’s what they were doing.

Alex had his Fender on his lap and his eyes closed. He played a riff that didn't sound related to anything. Maybe it was calming him. Maybe he was somewhere else entirely, not even listening. She couldn't tell.

She stole a cigarette out of the pocket of the jacket he’d left hanging on the back of the door. She was choosing to ignore how this was becoming an I-need-a-smoke kind of thing rather than just a steal-one-from-Alex-just-because kind of thing. “I’m going to get some air,” she said.

“Mm,” he said, his eyes still closed.

She was starting to work herself up into being really annoyed when he pushed open the back exit door to the alley where she was standing and smoking. “I hear you,” he said, as if there had been no interruption in their conversation. “Let’s go get a coffee. Clear our heads.”

-

They hadn't really been in a kind of public, daytime place together since the first time  they met. She was so used to Alex in his own habitat that it was a whole new source of  fascination to watch him digging in his pocket for his wallet, wearing his sunglasses i ndoors (though he took them off when they sat down), watching the way he fidgeted constantly when he didn't have a guitar or a pen or a cigarette. He rearranged the sugar packets and tapped the table and shredded the paper sleeve around his cup. It felt wrong not to be touching him so she shifted her leg just a little to where their kneecaps were resting against each other, prompting him to glance at her with the tiniest bit of a smirk on his lips. He pulled his little black moleskine out of his back pocket and scribbled something down, then shifted up in his chair to put it back, pushing his knee closer against hers.

"Are you a coffee- shop writer?" she asked. 

“Mmm, you could say that, I do like the background noise. But I like to be prepared anywhere. You?”

“It’s usually when I’m driving. I’d record myself on my phone. That’s where some of those first things I showed you came from.

"I see it," he said. "The movement and all. Makes sense why you went along with my crazed spontaneous road trip."

"Travelling, driving, the horizon, getting reborn...transformed. Hang on, I like that." She  pulled out her phone to type it in a note. Alex looked pleased. While she was typing her note, someone came up to the table.

"Hey, Alex? I'm really sorry to bother you with your girlfriend but I'm a really big fan and I was just wondering if I could get a picture?" It was a youngish woman, maybe around Alexandra's age, looking timid but hopeful.

"Sure," Alex said, and let the girl put her arm around his shoulder and snap a selfie. 

"Thank you," she said, her eyes landing briefly on Alexandra. "Sorry again to bother you."

"Thank you," Alex said, waving goodbye awkwardly. He gulped his coffee, looking a bit disconcerted.

"I forget that you're famous," Alexandra said.

"Don't be absurd, I'm not famous," he said, returning to shredding his coffee sleeve. "Beyonce is famous. People just sometimes recognize me."

Alexandra thought about her embarrassing Google- stalking last weekend. Alexander was an absurdly common name and while she didn't know any other Turners, it's not as if that were an unusual one either, yet almost every single hit when you typed in his name was actually him. She was pretty sure that qualified as famous. When you searched "Alexandra McDermott," you got a bunch of soccer statistics for a 16-year-old in Cleveland, Ohio. She was not famous.

"I know you're not me girlfriend," he said, having completely destroyed his coffee sleeve and moving on to constructing a tower of sugar packets.

"Don't make it weird," she said, nudging his knee with hers.

“Not making it weird,” he said quietly. “Just reminding meself.”

She could see him going off somewhere in his head, but let him. She knew that’s what was going to end this, eventually. Despite his dramatic warnings about her losing herself, getting sick of him, telling him to fuck off, it wasn’t going to be any of that. It was going to be that if anyone came to know her as "Alex Turner's girlfriend," that was all she would ever be no matter how good the record was. And the fact that she wasn't Alex’s girlfriend didn't help, because being "that girl who is sleeping with Alex Turner" would be worse. That would bring along the kind of accusations like "I bet she slept her way into her record deal" or "I bet that's how she convinced him to work with her," no matter how untrue those things might be. It had been easy, the past few weeks, to ignore this because they hadn’t been around any other people to remind her of the unpleasantness of reality. She was trying to continue ignoring reality. That was one nice thing about L.A. - its relation to the real world was only occasional, incidental. The rest of the time it was enough to just method act the screenplay that you felt like living. And right now she had a bit more of the film reel to live out, the next days of recording, during which she could pretend that she wasn’t still a nineteen-year-old nobody and Alex wasn’t someone who complete strangers asked for selfies in coffee shops. That’s all she had to do. Get back into the role. Method acting. She could do that. Alex did it all the time, didn’t he? They just had to sit here pretending that they weren’t themselves, just uncomplicated people who made music together ( _ together, not with him telling her what to do _ ) having a completely uncomplicated cup of coffee during a recording studio break. 

Two people having a cup of coffee complicated by Alex sneaking his hand under the table and tracing his index finger in circles over her kneecap.

She met his eyes. He was back from wherever he’d been in his mind, watching her face intently. 

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Where’d you go?” 

She didn’t know how to answer that. She could have asked him the same. He kept tracing his fingers around in circles, running his eyes over her face. He walked his thumb over to the sensitive spot on the inside of her knee that by some bizarre accident of evolution felt hardwired to her clit. She went to take a sip of her coffee before realizing that she had finished it. She tried not to move. He squeezed her knee a little harder. Was it normal to get turned on from this kind of thing or was her wiring defective? Or was it just him, like they had some kind of bizarre chemical reaction together? Did that nice girl who had so timidly asked for a picture know that he was literally evil?

"You look fucking sexy right now," he said quietly. "Trying not to squirm. It’s not going well. Are you getting wet for me?"

"Are you trying to kill me?” she said, her voice sounding like it belonged to someone else.

"Ah, there you go," he said, getting up and putting his sunglasses on. "Hear your voice all loose like that? Fuckin' perfect, right? That’s how you wanted it? You just had to stop thinking so hard. Come on."

She stood up, feeling dizzy - not surprising, since all the blood in her brain was clearly elsewhere. So much for that pep talk she’d just given herself. He knew all her weak spots. He knew ones she didn’t even know she had. She stumbled after him, back out into the blinding sunlight.


	14. Chapter 14

  
  
  


“I hate small talk,” Alexandra had said within about fifteen minutes of their first meeting. She was showing off a bit for Alex, what little she knew about him then. Just the outlines. Motorcycle, sunglasses, black-leather-jacket Alex. She wanted to show she could swim in the deep end, that she wasn’t just another L.A. blonde. But she was also pretty sure she had meant it, and that she still did. They hadn’t needed it in order to know each other, had they? It didn’t matter what her favorite food was, what his worst subject in school had been. He knew her more than anyone else ever had. Her secrets, her weaknesses. Probably secrets that she was even keeping from herself. 

It made it easy to forget all the things she didn’t know about him. She had forgotten, now that she thought about it, that they’d had sex twice before he had even asked her if she had a boyfriend. And who knew if he even would have asked then, if he hadn’t gotten worried that he was going to get beat up by some jealous guy who might see the fingernail marks he’d left behind from grabbing her. Maybe she wasn’t even the first dumb, inexperienced girl that he’d given a crash course in Blowjobs 101.

No one had ever said this wasn’t strange, this...relationship, situation, arrangement, whatever it was.

She jogged after him down the sidewalk, trying to look normal and not like a substantial part of her was seriously considering dragging him down an alleyway and begging him not to stop touching her. This was too important to be...whatever the girl equivalent of the phrase “thinking with your dick” was. This was too important to be thinking with her proverbial dick. 

“You’re an only child, aren’t you?”

He slowed down as she fell into step next to him. “Random much?”

“No, because you always have to get your way! You can’t just...just…” she shook her head. This wasn’t coming out right at all. He stopped and put his hand on her arm, tugging her gently to the side so that no one would run into them.

“Hey. What does that mean?”

“I’m not you, Alex! I’m the one singing these lyrics, if you don’t think they’re right --” she lowered her voice, realizing that they were still standing in the middle of a public sidewalk. “We have to actually agree. You can’t just get me all worked up so you can toy with me like I’m your puppet!”

Alex pulled his hand back like he’d been burned. The playful smile dropped off his face. 

“Fuck,” he said after a minute. “You really think I’m that manipulative?”

“No--”

“‘Cause I know I’m a fuckin’ piece of shit, Alexandra, and fuck knows I’ve not been able to hide that from you, even if I’d wanted to.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “But I...” He made an exasperated noise and shook his head.

“Alex, that’s not what I meant. At all.”

She wasn’t sure how a person could make just breathing have the effect of an entire sentence, but Alex somehow managed it. She was kind of alarmed by how easily and visibly she’d upset him. Alex being stoic the majority of the time was one of the few consistent features of his Alex-ness. She should have thought about what she was going to say. They should have had this conversation when she was calm, not when she was both turned on and annoyed. But she couldn’t take it back now, or figure out any better way to explain.

“I don’t want you to be me.” He took another deep breath. “You don’t even know how much.”

“Then tell me.” He didn’t say anything. “Tell me.” How many times had he demanded that of her? Didn’t she deserve the same?

“The right thing to say…” He paused. “Even if you try to forget, it’s still...” He frowned. “No matter how hard I try, it might not matter.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t know how to say it.” He pushed his sunglasses up on his head, like letting her see his eyes was some kind of signal that he surrendered. “Can we go back? Try the song again? You can decide. However it feels right.”

When she sang it again,  _ crying to the credits of a show, that you’ve seen a bunch of times before, _ you, you, you, not  _ me _ \- it did feel different. And this time, singing it Alex’s way, it sounded fine. She felt it like she needed to in order to get the words out. But she wasn’t sure that was what she had wanted.

-

Alexandra had been practicing not singing with her eyes closed, especially since she was hoping eventually her amateur guitar skills would be good enough that she could sing and play at the same time. This afternoon it was too much effort though, and she kept them shut. By the time she took her headphones off and looked around, Alex had disappeared somewhere. She didn’t know how long he’d been gone. She saw the top of James’ curly head through the glass and came out to sit on the stool next to him.

“I think I’m tapping out,” she said.

“It’s fine,” James said. “We’re perfectly on schedule. Don’t worry. You know we’re not coming in on the weekend, right? Because I know Alex would if he could, I’m sure he’s been doing things like calling you at all hours of the night and day with ideas he’s thought up and absolutely can’t wait to talk about.”

She hadn’t actually thought about the fact that it was Friday, or that most people had this fixed concept of weekends as a time when no work was done.

“Yeah,” she said, in response to James’ question, figuring it was better to be vague. “Something like that. Do you have plans?”

“Meeting up with a friend I haven’t seen since I was last in town on Sunday, and I’m trying to pin down Miles for drinks later, and Alex too if I can, but they’re shifty, those two.”

Alex appeared in the doorway, holding a tambourine. “Who’s shifty?”

“You,” James said.

“Thanks, mate. What did I do?”

“Won’t commit to getting drinks with me and Miles. Thought we were friends, Al,” James teased. “Unless you’ve thrown me over for some new L.A. bird.”

Alex looked confused, but then rummaged in his pocket for his phone. He looked at the screen. “Oh.” He made an odd, trapped-looking movement with his shoulder. Alexandra reached over and took the tambourine from him. “Thanks,” he said, opening his messages using both hands. “Oh. Sorry, James. I didn’t read any of these.” He scrolled for a moment. “Could have just come and asked me, you know. I was just in the other room.”

“You and your tambourine looked busy.”

Alex shrugged. “I were thinking.” 

“So…?”

“Huh?”

“Al. Do you have plans tonight?” James said loudly, like he was trying to talk to Alex from far away. “Are we getting drinks?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah,” Alex said distractedly. “Is Alexandra coming?”

“Of course,” James said, looking to her for confirmation. “Aren’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t want to intrude --” she looked at Alex, not sure where they stood after whatever that had been this afternoon. Alex was examining something invisible on the sleeve of his jacket.

“Nonsense,” said James. “Do you need a ride?”

“I’ll take her,” Alex said, like she wasn’t even there.

\--

The bar was the casual, loud, sticky-floored kind, whose background music came from videos streaming off of Youtube through a projector onto the painted brick wall behind the pool table. Fast, punky, guitar-and-drums heavy stuff. It wasn’t really Alexandra’s kind of sound, but it fit the dive-bar atmosphere, no one had asked for her ID, thank god, and she tried to get into it. She definitely didn’t want to seem like a wet blanket, the only girl who couldn’t hang with the guys. They were all drinking whiskey and cokes, and so was she, but that was fine - she’d developed a taste for it, hanging out with Alex. What wasn’t entirely fine was that she was drinking as much and as fast as the three grown men she was with, but given her lack of other options for dealing with the emotional rollercoaster of a day she had had, getting drunk seemed like a pretty good course of action.

“Remember that song I played for you on the phone, Miles?” Alex asked as he sat down and distributed another round of drinks.

“Which one? The Cohen cover?”

“No, the other one.”

“Oh yeah,” Miles said, nodding his head. “The love song for Tiger.” He snickered.

“Who the fuck is Tiger?” James asked at the same time Alex said “I told you that’s not fuckin’ what it’s about.”

“His dealer,” Miles said, grinning wickedly. 

“That line were just a coincidence,” Alex grumbled. 

“Tiger?” Alexandra said.

“S’not his real name,” Alex said, avoiding her eyes.

“Lads!” James said, shoving Alex in the shoulder hard enough that he knocked into Alexandra, who had been about to take a sip of her drink and tipsily sloshed a good quarter of it on to Alex’s arm. “Keep your vices to yourselves, there’s a young lady present!” He reached over as if to cover Alexandra’s ears, and she batted him away, downing the rest of her drink before she lost any more of it. If he only knew.

“Sorry,” Alexandra muttered. Alex barely acknowledged her, brushing ineffectually at his sticky arm.

“Alright, alright,” said Miles, handing Alexandra a crumpled-looking paper napkin, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. “What about it, Alex?”

“Alexandra doesn’t want to put it on the record,” he said. “Don’t you think --”

Were they really still talking about this? Why was he so fixated on it?

Miles suddenly interrupted Alex with a wave of his hand, distracted by something. He hit James on the arm to get his attention and pointed towards the music video that was now playing through the projector and on the bar’s sound system.

“Fuckin’ hell,” said Alex, following their eyes.

“Fuck yes,” said Miles. Alexandra looked back and forth between the three of them, trying to figure out what was so funny to Miles and James and so apparently not funny to Alex. She looked over at the video. 

“Hey, isn’t that your friend Matt playing the drums?”

Miles laughed even harder.

“I need a fuckin’ smoke,” Alex said, tugging at the chain he always wore around his neck. Alexandra looked back at the video, at the floppy-haired boy singing something that sounded like “you were gagging for it,” and back at Alex, then back at the boy in the video, who had an identical chain under the collar of his preppy button-up shirt.

“Oh my god,” she said, the dots connecting. “Oh my god.” She looked intently at the frowning Alex in front of her, trying to match him up to his younger self. He didn’t even sound the same, his voice not nearly as deep, his accent so thick she could barely understand the lyrics. 

“Aw, Al, baby,” Miles said, wiping a tear of laughter off his face. “I’m sorry. We’ll stop teasing.”

“Don’t act like you weren’t just as little as I were in fuckin’, 2007 or whenever that were. You can get the next round,” Alex said irritably, sticking an unlit cigarette in his mouth and standing up. “I’ll be outside.”

\---

Miles and James started talking about someone they both knew, and Alexandra excused herself and got up, trying not to stumble. Instead of getting another drink like she had said she was going to, she went out front where Alex was leaning against the wall, frowning and smoking. He glanced up at her.

“Al.”

He didn’t say anything, just offered her the half-smoked cigarette. She took it and he lit himself another one.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You don’t look fine.”

He blew out a mouthful of smoke with an alarming amount of force.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“‘Bout what? You didn’t do nothing.” He looked up at the smoggy sky, like the right words were up there somewhere. “I’m not trying to manipulate you -- god, Alex, I hate that you think that --”

“I don’t,” she interrupted. “I don’t. I swear. I just want to know why you can’t trust me to know what’s right for me to say, on my own record. It has you written all over it, Alex, I don’t have to be singing your words for that to be true. If I don’t say how I feel is right, it’s going to be all you. I’m not going to be able to tell what’s me.”

“I fuckin’ told you that,” he said. “Out in the desert. I told you.”

Her irritation flared again. Drunk and tired was probably no better time to talk about this than annoyed and horny, but if she was waiting for a time when she was sober and thinking clearly she’d probably be waiting forever, at this point. Also, waiting for the right time was assuming a level of self-control that was clearly far out of her reach.

“See what I mean? You have to be right, don’t you?” she snapped.

In an instant he was crowding her back against the wall, looming over her impressively considering he was only about an inch taller. “Fuckin’ listen to me, Alexandra,” he said, low and harsh. “Listen to me good. I may be a fuckin’ piece of shit but even I have limits. If you want this to stop, you say so. You say so and I swear to god I won’t lay a finger on you and we’ll finish this record like friends and we won’t say a word about it ever again.”

“That’s not what I want.” She was shaking; he had to be able to feel it, close as they were standing. “I want you so fucking bad Alex, all the time, how can you think I don’t, I can’t  _ think _ \--”

He kissed her then, without even a glance to check if they were still alone, their teeth clacking together. When he pulled back, they were both shaking.

“It’s gonna keep getting all tangled up like this, then,” he said. “I don’t wanna be right, I don’t wanna be, but I am. You have to trust that I am. When I’m not writing, making music, I got nothing. It’s like I wanna leave something in there so you don’t forget me when you’re…” He let go of her and waved his hand up at the clouds, evidently lacking the word for whatever was meant to finish the sentence. “So I don’t disappear, either.” 

She stared at him, heart pounding. She ran her tongue over her lip, unconsciously, and his breath hitched.

“We should go back inside,” he said. “Or I’m not gonna be able to keep me fuckin’ hands off you.”

“Then don’t,” she whispered.

-

Science had never exactly been Alexandra’s subject, but she was suddenly thinking about her physics teacher scribbling on the chalkboard about conservation of mass and conservation of energy. Things don't just disappear. They have to go somewhere. Alex had told her that, back when all this started. There was something inside them -- was it inside everyone? Or was it why they had to write, and play music, and not become lawyers, or accountants? Whatever it was, it would burn and build up and come out in a song. And sometimes the song wasn't enough to hold it. And then where did it go? To playing these kinds of dangerous games, letting him grope her in a coffee shop, shouting at each other on the sidewalk? Her elbows scraped up from where he’d pushed her against the brick wall? To Alex on the phone with his dealer? And after that, to here, to this.

And if it was going here -- here being the driver’s seat of Alex's car, where they were frantically grinding against each other, trying to kiss and giving up when it took too much coordination, Alex's jaw clenched hard, Alexandra whimpering into the shoulder of his t-shirt -- if it was going here, wasn't it just getting passed back and forth between them, rather than dissipating, and wasn't the inevitable result some kind of combustion? It felt like that, the sweaty heat of the car, the music from the bar still thumping in the background, this stupid, reckless, way-too-public place _. _

Yeah. Combustion. Either that or forming a tear in the universe and falling through. Maybe that hadn't been physics class, maybe that was some middle-of-the-night B-movie on the sci-fi channel. It didn’t matter. They were in Hollywood, after all.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ps I have a tumblr now @constellationcolour come say hi :)


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